How can we write a history of modern and contemporary Italy? The art of synthesis is a much-undervalued one in the world of academia, especially in the age of metrics and REF scores. The more readers, it seems, the less seriously a work of history is taken – and good writing is rarely, if ever, valued in our upside-down university system. Obscurity and inward-looking arguments are – still – valued above all else. This latest history of Italy joins a growing list of introductory accounts aimed largely at undergraduates. It is lavishly produced, with numerous images and maps scattered throughout the text. Anthony Cardoza is a distinguished historian with wide interests in the liberal and Fascist periods and in other areas central to Italian life and history – such as cycling. He is thus ideally placed to write such a volume, given his experience in research and long periods of teaching undergraduates about Italy. The result is a crystal-clear volume, which rightfully takes its place alongside the best general accounts on the market – above all Christopher Duggan’s A Concise History of Italy (1994).

Cardoza adopts a chronological and narrative approach to Italian history. He keeps concepts largely out of the story. Gramsci is never mentioned, for example. However, some indications as to his overarching interpretations can be found in the first few pages of this book. Cardoza is interested in transmitting two broad ideas connected to Italian history (as indicated in the book’s title). The first is a sense of transformation and continuity, what he calls the ‘seismic shift in … social and economic landscape while simultaneously maintaining older cultural norms, social practices and political methods’. Secondly, he aims to bring in ‘research findings … [from] the new quantitative and cultural historical scholarship of the past two and a half decades’.

The advantages of a narrative approach are obvious – and Cardoza exploits them to the full. This is a book which can be read cover to cover. It transmits a sense of a story that moves forward through the highways and byways of Italian life. Students can also pick up certain sections and learn about, say, the First World War or the Southern Question, in a few crisp pages. Pages can be set by lecturers who will be able to utilise this book as a basis before moving their students on to other things. The images, accompanied by detailed captions, provide another way of transmitting ideas and moments from Italy’s past.

Cardoza also keeps any sense of further reading to a minimum. Almost all of his secondary references are to English language sources or translations from the Italian. He does not refer in any detail to various schools that have emerged in Italian historical circles in recent years – for example, the new southern history, transnational approaches, the vast amount of new work on the Risorgimento and national identity encapsulated in Banti and Ginsborg’s volume Il Risorgimento. Above all, perhaps, to be critical for a moment, Cardoza does not really allow a sense of debate into his account. There is no space for controversies among historians. This is history as chronicle, and there is also a danger in this case of falling into the traps of chronological story-telling: a teleological approach (history moves along train tracks and keeps going, progress is therefore inevitable) and a sense that a number of things ‘happened’ – yes, with a social or cultural or economic explanation, but not with any idea of discussions and different interpretations amongst the historical community, which is surely the life-blood of history?

I want to analyse what is in this book, and not what is not in it (a common failing amongst book reviewers). However, I would like to indulge myself a little here. It is odd that Cardoza, who has published distinguished work on the relationship between Italian cycling and the Giro d’Italia and national identity, makes no mention of cycling at all in this book. Moreover, he only mentions football once, with reference to the World Cup victories of 1934 and 1938. The most important collective moments of national identification in the history of the Italian republic – the World Cup victories of 2006 and, above all, 1982 – are omitted from this account. The latter achieved a 95 per cent share of Italy’s TV audience – a record that will surely never be broken. Surely such an event, remembered by most Italians as central to the postwar period, is worth at least a mention?