In Giulio Napolitano's new book "The world on his shoulders. A family and political story", published by Mondadori, there is a lot of life in a family story: the close bond between parents Giorgio and Clio, the tenderness of the relationship between father and son carved in about fifteen touching letters written in the most delicate bends of the path of both, the intimacy of daily events in private homes and in those of service, from Montecitorio to the Quirinale.
The history of republican Italy through Napolitano
E the history of republican Italy runs parallel of the last fifty years from the historic compromise between PCI and DC to the advent of Giorgia Meloni, passing through the end of the First Republic, the alternation between Prodi and Berlusconi, the rescue of the country from financial default and the attempt to start a program of broad economic and institutional reforms.
What emerges is an extraordinary "how we were", the full-length portrait of Giorgio Napolitano and together with the ancient way of doing politics, as a collective responsibility of those who, from different positions, contributed to building post-war Italy, to strengthening its democratic foundations and to developing its productive and welfare system.
And together the difficulty of the challenges of the present, addressed by Giorgio Napolitano, a man of the institutions in his nine years at the Quirinale, in a global and national context that has now completely changed: the push for a further advancement of theEuropean integration and international cooperation, the obsession for the modernization of institutions, the call for dialogue between political forces in moments of crisis for the good of the country, the protection of national unity.
The Political and Cultural Legacy of Giorgio Napolitano
One last note. Giorgio Napolitano was also a humanist end, an intellectual, a man of culture, a lover of theatre, music, cinema and literature. But he always had a passion for the major economic issues in his very long parliamentary activity and then at the top of the State. The book also wisely acknowledges this: the attention to workers' conditions in the factory and of the labourers in the fields at the beginning of his party commitment, the battles for the industrial and social development of the South in Parliament, the vindication of the results of national solidarity in the fight against inflation and in the defence of the purchasing power of citizens, theadmiration for Keynes's work cultivated through intense frequentation of Piero Sraffa in Cambridge and the best economists of his generation, starting with his great friend Luigi Spaventa, the special relationship with the Bank of Italy and its governors, the very close relationship with Carlo Azeglio Ciampi in his various roles until becoming his successor, the last-minute intervention for save Italy with the spread skyrocketing with the birth of the Monti government and the safeguard measures of Mario Draghi at the helm of the European Central Bank.
A book to be read from beginning to end, in which each line alternates anecdotes funny, unpublished episodes, original political (and legal) notes in a story that is always warm and enveloping, not at home published in the most important literature series (Italian and foreign writers) of Mondadori.
