In a recent book, Ernesto Galli Della Loggia, historian and columnist of Corriere della sera, has gathered the articles that, since the beginning of the 21st Century, he published in the major Italian newspaper. In the introduction, the author also offers a general verdict on today's Italian crisis defining it 'the sunset of a nation'. The book is an opportunity to recall what has happened to Italian society, politics, and culture in the last decades. It is also an opportunity to reflect on this from the point of history. The essay analyzes and discusses the author's interpretation and compares it with other scholars’ hypotheses. The conclusion is a suggestion to reconsider the long period limits of Italian democracy deeply.
Keywords: Italy in the 21st Century, postwar Italy, interpretations of Italian history, Italian excep-tionality, Cold War, Fascist inheritance in Italy