The Sack of Rome: Media + Money + Celebrity = Power = Silvio Berlusconi

Alexander Stille

Penguin, 2007 - History - 382 pages

Award-winning author Alexander Stille has been called ?one of the best English-language writers on Italy? by the New York Times Book Review, and in The Sack of Rome he sets out to answer the question: What happens when vast wealth, a virtual media monopoly, and acute shamelessness combine in one man? Many are the crimes of Silvio Berlusconi, Stille argues, and, with deft analysis, he weaves them into a single mesmerizing chronicle?an epic saga of rank criminality, cronyism, and self-dealing at the highest levels of power.

Contents

• One The Miracle Worker: 35
• Three Television and Money: 52
• Amicizia Profession Friendship: 74
• Fwe The Pax Televisiva and the Expansion: 99
• Six Operation Clean Hands and the Entry: 120
• Seven BERLUSCONI ENTERS THE PLAYING FlELD: 180
• Nine Berlusconi out of PowerGounterpunching: 205
• Eleven Triumph: 252
• Twelve OneMan Government: 270
• Thirteen The PRESS TAKEOVER: 294
• Fourteen Basta con Berlusconi Enough Berlusconi: 313
• Afterword: 343
• Bibliography: 366

Popular passages

Page 122 - With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, our security environment has undergone profound transformation.‎

Page 78 - When you wake up in the morning and look in the mirror, what do you see?" she asked. "I see a woman,‎

Page ii - THE SACK OF ROME How a Beautiful European Country with a Fabled History and a Storied Culture Was Taken Over by a Man Named Silvio Berlusconi ALEXANDER STILLE "A brilliant commentary on democracy.. ..Stille's fascinating account of the decadence of Italian democracy contains potent lessons for other nations."— Arthur M.‎

Page 112 - In the late 1980s, with the decline of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, soccer seemed to replace politics as the prime topic of conversation in Italy.‎

Page 23 - Se non e vero, e ben trovato. " (If it's not true, it's well...‎

Page 98 - Berlusconi did not feel he could pick up the phone and call the police even now that he was one of the richest men in the country and the...‎

Page 15 - ... as Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People and Norman Vincent Peale's The Power of Positive Thinking.‎

Page 12 - ... capacity to influence the structure of economic inequality. As he notes in explaining why students did not protest budget cuts to education: The national political scene is forbidding. The public at large has little confidence that problems can be solved by government actions. Even Americans unpersuaded by Ronald Reagan that "government is not the solution, government is the problem", lack the faith that anyone knows what to do about cities, jobs, education, or race relations.‎

About the author

Alexander Stille is the author of The Future of the Past, Excellent Cadavers: The Mafia and the Death of the First Italian Republic, and Benevolence and Betrayal: Five Italian Jewish Families Under Fascism, which won the Los Angeles Times Book Award. He is a frequent contributor to The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Magazine, and other publications.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Sack of Rome: Media + Money + Celebrity = Power = Silvio Berlusconi
• Author: Alexander Stille
• Edition: reprint
• Publisher: Penguin, 2007
• ISBN: 0143112104, 9780143112105
• Length: 382 pages
• Subjects: Biography & Autobiography / Political; Biography & Autobiography / Presidents & Heads of State; History / Europe / Italy; Political Science / Political Process / General