Il Duce's Other Woman

A person of exceptional erudition and culture, Margherita Sarfatti (1880-1961) was the Italian dictator's lover, political adviser and intellectual mentor, the authors show in their enlightening study. They reveal how, in the period following the Great War, the two combined their socialist ideals and fierce nationalism to forge a revolutionary movement--Fascism--and how Mussolini in the end ``could not tolerate public knowledge that a woman and a Jew had done as much as she had to build the Fascist regime.'' Her forced departure from Italy in 1938 (the year Il Duce declared his anti-Semitic policies) proved to be Sarfatti's salvation. In their excellent biography of this difficult, dynamic, memorable woman, Cannistraro and Sullivan present aspects of her lover's career not previously explored in detail: Mussolini's experiences as a solider in WW I, his editorship of the socialist paper Avanti! and his active interest in creating a favorable international image of Fascist Italy. Cannistraro is head of the history and politics department at Drexel University in Pennsylvania; Sullivan is a senior fellow at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C. Photos. (Feb.)