Korner is perfectly positioned to undertake the ambitious task of writing a comprehensive overview of the history of the images of America in Italy between the American Revolution and the Civil War. The result of his effort is an elegantly written, extraordinarily erudite and highly innovative work, whose reading will reward both Italian and American scholars with the discovery of a multitude of cultural and political connections between eighteenth- and nineteenth century Italy and the United States.
-Enrico Dal Lago, European History Quarterly [America in Italy] makes an extremely valuable contribution to both intellectual and cultural history by its close examination of what this diverse group of Italian intellectuals, activists, and, to a lesser degree, the Italian 'public' understood about American life and political institutions (and the impact of this understanding on their nationalist struggle).
Choice Winner of the 2018 Helen and Howard R. Marraro Prize, American Historical Association America in Italy looks at how Risorgimento thinkers and Italian nationalists perceived the American experiment in federalist democracy and how they applied the U.S. political model to their own project of unifying Italy into an independent state. This meticulously researched book places itself within the growing debates of the broader transnational and international aspects of the Italian Risorgimento and offers up a careful analysis of Italian political thinkers generally unavailable to English-reading scholars.
Suzanne Stewart-Steinberg, Brown University This exceptional book shows the tight relationship between political action and belief, and the wider impact of high and low culture. Positioning Italian culture and political thought transnationally, and harnessing overlooked sources in an innovative and exciting fashion, K rner shows brilliantly how Italy responded to America as part of a wider European engagement and introduces Anglophone readers to significant Italian thinkers.
David Laven, University of Nottingham