About the Author
Born in 1871 in a middle-class Italian family, Guglielmo Ferrero began his academic life as a law student and student radical in Pisa. In 1908, invited by President Theodore Roosevelt, Ferrero visited the United States and gave the lectures that form this book. With the rise of Mussolini, Ferrero became an opposition figure in Italy. Allowed to leave Italy in 1930, Ferrero became a professor of contemporary history in the University of Geneva, a post he held until his death in 1942.
