The past as a tool for understanding the present and the future, including for businesses
A history book is a good read to help grow a good production culture
Learn about what happened in the past in order to act better in the present while thinking about the future. A wise approach for everyone, including those who run a business. Indeed, it is part of a good corporate culture not to forget the past – one’s own organisation and the context in which it operates – to work better in the present. This is why history books should also be on the reading list of every good entrepreneur and manager. This also applies to “L’Italia repubblicana. Un profilo storico dal 1946 ad oggi” (Republican Italy. A historical profile from 1946 to today), co-authored by Salvatore Mura and Albertina Vittoria, to be published in the next few days.
Mura and Vittoria start with an observation: in the history of republican Italy we find the roots of the weakness of politics and institutions, the causes of the regional differences between the North and the South of the country, the intellectual climate that accompanied the social transformations. The history of the country in the aftermath of the Second World War, conditioned by a series of internal and external constraints, a complex history with many avenues that must be explored simultaneously to get an accurate picture of what happened. To explain all this history, the book adopts a perspective that is not only political, nor only economic, but also focuses on cultural processes, the role of the mass media, the struggles for civil and political rights, immigration, discrimination, the limited presence of women in institutions and at work.
The reading offered by the two authors begins with the post-war period and the reconstruction, but immediately moves on to the beginning of the Cold War, and then on to the years of economic boom, social reforms and economic growth, which then define two Italies and a society in transition. Mura and Vittoria therefore take into account the great economic and social movements of the sixties to arrive at the great problems of the eighties and then at what is defined as “another era”: the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first. The book ends with an account of more recent events: the pandemic season, its aftermath, the phenomenon of large-scale migration.
The value of Salvatore Mura and Albertina Vittoria’s book is rightly noted in the opening pages: “This book is indeed a portrait of the past, but it also aims to be a tool for understanding the present.” One of the most powerful quotes in the book is from Marc Bloch, one of the fathers of contemporary history: “Misunderstanding of the present is the inevitable consequence of ignorance of the past.”
L’Italia repubblicana. Un profilo storico dal 1946 ad oggi
Salvatore Mura, Albertina Vittoria
Carocci editore, 2025
A history book is a good read to help grow a good production culture
Learn about what happened in the past in order to act better in the present while thinking about the future. A wise approach for everyone, including those who run a business. Indeed, it is part of a good corporate culture not to forget the past – one’s own organisation and the context in which it operates – to work better in the present. This is why history books should also be on the reading list of every good entrepreneur and manager. This also applies to “L’Italia repubblicana. Un profilo storico dal 1946 ad oggi” (Republican Italy. A historical profile from 1946 to today), co-authored by Salvatore Mura and Albertina Vittoria, to be published in the next few days.
Mura and Vittoria start with an observation: in the history of republican Italy we find the roots of the weakness of politics and institutions, the causes of the regional differences between the North and the South of the country, the intellectual climate that accompanied the social transformations. The history of the country in the aftermath of the Second World War, conditioned by a series of internal and external constraints, a complex history with many avenues that must be explored simultaneously to get an accurate picture of what happened. To explain all this history, the book adopts a perspective that is not only political, nor only economic, but also focuses on cultural processes, the role of the mass media, the struggles for civil and political rights, immigration, discrimination, the limited presence of women in institutions and at work.
The reading offered by the two authors begins with the post-war period and the reconstruction, but immediately moves on to the beginning of the Cold War, and then on to the years of economic boom, social reforms and economic growth, which then define two Italies and a society in transition. Mura and Vittoria therefore take into account the great economic and social movements of the sixties to arrive at the great problems of the eighties and then at what is defined as “another era”: the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first. The book ends with an account of more recent events: the pandemic season, its aftermath, the phenomenon of large-scale migration.
The value of Salvatore Mura and Albertina Vittoria’s book is rightly noted in the opening pages: “This book is indeed a portrait of the past, but it also aims to be a tool for understanding the present.” One of the most powerful quotes in the book is from Marc Bloch, one of the fathers of contemporary history: “Misunderstanding of the present is the inevitable consequence of ignorance of the past.”
L’Italia repubblicana. Un profilo storico dal 1946 ad oggi
Salvatore Mura, Albertina Vittoria
Carocci editore, 2025