Vittorio Bruno is a journalist with great experience in the world of Italian politics of which he observed for a long time the many defects but also those which, at least in the First Republic, were the cultural and dialectical refinements. Only he could try his hand at writing a profound and at the same time light and curious like the story, through episodes and characters, of Italians and insurance companies from the Risorgimento to today. The volume is entitled "For business and for love" published by Rizzoli on the initiative and sponsorship of ANIA, the association of insurance companies which thus intended to make a cultural contribution to the celebrations of the 150th anniversary of the unification of Italy .
The way to put together important pages of national history with the more prosaic world of business, and in particular of insurance, was found by Vittorio Bruno in recounting single episodes where big and small characters of this century and a half of history have involved in economics or insurance and social security systems. A minor story, if we like, which is not studied on school textbooks, but curious, sometimes amusing, and in any case always interesting to understand the real life of those years, from which they flourished the glorious actions, the less fortunate ones, or even the intrigues that led to the unity of the peninsula.
Cavour, as we know, was attentive to the phenomena of the economy. He knew that if he wanted to make little Piedmont play a leading role in the unitary affair, he had to modernize its economy. And this not only to strengthen the revenues of the Savoyard state with perpetually empty coffers, but also to give birth to the new state in the sign of the development and general improvement of living conditions. Once he said to Baron Ricasoli "if in addition to pasta and vegetables, we also want to eat more substantial steaks, we cannot help but ask the market for help".
Episode after episode we understand how the insurance companies, born with the Florentine merchants in the 300th century, have a history intertwined with the unitary process, both because they often financed the wars of independence or uprisings, such as the five days of Milan, and because they marked all stages of the country's social evolution. This applies to fire insurance with the birth of the Reale Mutua in Turin, up to the creation of the INA by Nitti and Giolitti in the first post-war period. And the task of making the birth of the new body was given by the two politicians to Beneduce, who years later finds himself as the creator of IRI. Generali which despite having its headquarters in Austrian territory actively participated in the unity of the peninsula through the action of personalities of great depth both in the business and cultural fields such as Marco Besso.
In short, a cross-section of men and situations that have made Italy as it is today with all its defects and with some advantages. The atavistic distrust of citizens towards the State which is demonstrated by the resistance to the payment of taxes the stronger the more the public sector is hungry and its bureaucracy oppressive, could open wide spaces for development to the insurance sector given that they will be it is precisely the private companies that have to replace or integrate the public sector in many fields starting with the pension and health care sectors.
