This article uses Venice as a case study of the ‘cultural revolution’ urged by some historians as a feature of the totalitarianizing ambition of the Fascist regime. But Bosworth finds a Venice which, though plainly affected by Fascism, nonetheless preserved much that was its own and much that expressed a continuity with the liberal era before 1922 and the liberal democratic one after 1945. He shows that many of the rhythms of Venetian life moved in ways which were different from those of political history, and argues that such differences ensured that Fascism scarcely instituted an all-controlling and completely alienating totalitarian society, at least in this Italian city.

For the century following Unification, malaria was the principal Italian public health problem. This article seeks to explain this high incidence and explores its impact both on the sufferer and on society. An eradication campaign began after Unification; gathered momentum at the turn of the century; and achieved victory following the Second World War. Important themes are the growing understanding of malaria; the search for weapons to combat it; and the contrasting approaches of the Liberal and Fascist regimes. Italy was the classic country to eradicate malaria by a national campaign and it is important to relate its success to the ongoing global debate surrounding malaria control and eradication.

This article sets out to outline the way in which existing narratives dealing with the development of modern design in post-1945 Italy have ignored those aspects of the story which do not concur with a characterization of that phenomenon that relies on the concepts of rationality, mass production and the impact of new materials. By focusing on and elaborating a number of ‘other’ themes—namely those of nature, craft, domesticity and the culture of consumption—this study sets out to redress this imbalance and to introduce the possibility of a new reading of modern design in Italy which can be seen to be rooted in a set of cultural values which are more obviously feminine’ in nature.