Woodrow Wilson and the American Myth in Italy

In 1918, Wilson’s image as leader of the free world and the image of America as dispenser of democracy spread through Italy, filling an ideological void. Rossini sets the Italian-American political confrontation in the context of the countries’ cultural perceptions of each other, different war experiences, and ideas about participatory democracy.

A compelling study of nationalist arrogance misrepresented as selfless idealism. Rossini's edifying study concerns the impact of Wilsonian idealism on U.S.-Italian relations and the disastrous unintended consequences of the United States' first war to remake the world in its own image. Her book should have the effect of a fire bell in the night. -- Richard Drake, author of Apostles and Agitators: Italy's Marxist Revolutionary Tradition A thoroughly researched and brilliantly presented study of the impact of Woodrow Wilson on Italy during the First World War. Rossini shows that this was the first instance when massive propaganda became a tool of U.S. foreign policy and that it succeeded in creating a sense of mass nationalism in a country where people's identities had been more fragmented. What Wilson and the emissaries of the 'American myth' tried out in Italy would be repeated on many future occasions. Thus the book provides a superb examination of American exceptionalism in the service of the world. -- Akira Iriye, Harvard University In a well-written and judicious book, Rossini demonstrates how the Italian public constructed a distorted, idealized image of the American president and his foreign policy goals, owing to the skillful spinning of his image by the U.S. propaganda machine--the Committee on Public Information--and to wishful thinking on the part of an Italian public aching for a savior from across the Atlantic. This is a valuable addition to the literature on Wilsonianism, the First World War, and the Paris Peace Conference. -- William R. Keylor, Boston University

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