Book Log 2007 #16: The Sack of Rome by Alexander Stille

I'd read Excellent Cadavers, Stille's book about Italy's war against the Mafia in the 1980s and early 1990s, and enjoyed his mix of biography, politics, and story-telling. So I was very pleased to see this book, in which Stille examines the rise and eventual fall of Silvio Berlusconi.

In a way, it's a particularly Italian story, as Berlusconi is able to use the existing system - both legal and extra-legal - to enrich himself and gain control over commercial TV, and then get the system changed so he can take political power. As an object lesson for what can happen to a political system is dominated by such a figure, it's instructive in what's been happening in some of the developing democracies and, to a point, here in the US.

That being said, the book does repeat information a little too much, and it does go on for a bit too long. Even so, the story it tells is engaging, informative, and worth reading. And I'd certainly recommend Excellent Cadavers, too.