Several years ago I emailed Steve Medema and asked him if there was any chance that more of the early Italian literature on public finance and public choice would be published. We rued the lack of access to that literature in English. Antonio de Viti de Marco’s First Principles of Public Finance was, of course, already available, through the work of Arthur and Edith Marget (de Viti de Marco Reference De Viti de Marco and Marget1936). And at least one key work of each of his successors, Maffeo Pantaleoni (Reference Pantaleoni1898) and Luigi Einaudi (Reference Einaudi, Einaudi, Faucci and Marchionatti2006), have now been made available. But there are still many gaps for those of us who cannot be immersed in the Italian editions. Now, with the publication of this volume and the accompanying video documentary (available at vimeo.com/29599475), we at least have more material about de Viti de Marco, including some good insights into the context of the Italian literature.

Manuela Mosca’s book gives us at least three good reasons to remember de Viti de Marco’s story. First, access to more information about his work gives us a better understanding of his ideas. The unpublished material included in the volume, as well as the interviews with both those who knew his family and leading scholars of scienza delle finanze, provide fresh insights into de Viti de Marco’s life and work. The second benefit of Mosca’s work is closely related: not only do we have here commentary on his work, but we also have material on the political life he led and the disappointments he suffered. His political commitments were the flip side of his intellectual ideas, but in his political activity we see how he found ways to apply those ideas in his own setting. And, finally, personal reminiscences of de Viti de Marco enrich our understanding of his life and activities. He was what Adam Smith called a “great proprietor”—a landed gentleman with property and tenants to manage. But he was also an entrepreneur, launching a winery, Masseria Li Veli, to widen the market for his vineyards (watch the documentary for a tour). During a discussion with the present-day managers of Li Veli, we hear that the vineyard was “his life, his joy … he felt himself when he was at Li Veli” (p. 22). We are reminded that he was not a university-based scholar, but a husband, a father, a business owner, a member of the landed elite who chose to immerse himself in the literature of the classical liberal tradition, as well as one of the founders of the Italian tradition of public administration. His ideas emerged from his engagement as both a private and public individual with issues of business ownership, land management, public interest, public administration, and public finance.

Mosca’s book highlights the lesser known aspects of de Viti de Marco’s life, especially about his family and management of private affairs, with a series of interviews with Emilia Chirilli, author of a book on the Italian economist’s “prehistory and protohistory” (Chirilli Reference Chirilli2010). A friend of the economist’s family whom Mosca met with almost every week for several years, Chirilli provided Mosca a view into the de Viti de Marco household and its activities, as well as unpublished family papers.

Mosca also provides the transcripts of several interviews with historians of public economics interested in de Viti de Marco’s work. Interviews with nine scholars from Italy and the United States provide the chance to lay the emphases and interpretations that various scholars have of his work side-by-side. The American interviews, with Jim Buchanan, Richard Wagner, and Steve Medema, all focus on the importance of de Viti de Marco’s importance for the public choice and public finance literature in the twentieth century. The Italian scholars, perhaps not surprisingly, provide a broader perspective, including not only his economic thought but also his political views and changing affiliations. Here, we find more about his views on money and banking, as well as the political disillusionment mentioned in the private household interviews earlier in the book. He was a man, Riccardo Faucci tells Mosca, “disillusioned with the present,” and when his hope for the return of free trade was swept aside by the fascists, the last years of his life were marked by “great bitterness.” One can only hope that we do not suffer the same disillusionment and bitterness today.