Today FDR's New Deal is regarded as the democratic ideal, the positive American response to the economic crisis that propelled Germany and Italy toward Fascism. Yet in the 1930s, these regimes were hardly considered antithetical. Cultural historian Schivelbusch investigates their shared elements...

The historical forerunners of contemporary austerity are still largely unexplored. This essay considers the "liberal phase" of Fascist Italy (1922-1925) as a case study to explain austerity as a full-blown rationality, that is intrinsically, and simultaneously, theory and practice, encompassing...