The Italians by John Hooper, book review

An engaging guide to the land of la dolce vita

"Noi siamo prodotto del passato e viviamo immerse nel passato" – "We are produced by the past and we live immersed in the past" wrote Abruzzo philosopher Benedetto Croce, this one of the thought-provoking quotes Hooper selects to head up the chapters of his brisk, and thoroughly engaging, study of the Italians.

His focus is on the people of today. But, he argues, the Italians can only be understood by listening out for the many complex "echoes and reverberations" of their past. Italy is, he reminds us, a relatively young nation, the 19th-century Risorgimento movement's ultimate success in ejecting Italy's foreign rulers was King Victor Emmanuel's proclamation of the foundation of the Kingdom of Italy on 17 March 1861.

Hooper has the skills of the good reporter, vividly portraying his own experiences of Italian society, an eye for the telling anecdote, the ability to source and showcase a fascinating array of facts and statistics, the tenaciousness to peel apart our clichés or easy definitions of a country beloved of many, looking behind the indisputable allure of a nation where there is a view that "life is infinitely precious [and to be] lived to the full", where "as much is done as is possible to improve on mundane reality, minimize what is dull, maximize what is agreeable, and generally file off the rough edges of existence". He goes as deep as he can, revealing many of the complexities a traveller may sense, but not have the insider knowledge to decode. Even the apparently straightforward associations of "la famiglia" as extolled by Giuseppe Mazzini – "La famiglia è la patria del cuore" ("the family is the homeland of the heart") is a complex concept, and associations galore are attached to "la bella figura", politically, historically, too.

His approach is even-handed and sometimes humorous, a refreshing contrast to much of the high drama he is describing, be that the violent, disintegrated past – from the Gothic War, the Italian Wars, the Sack of Rome, the wrangling for power between the Papal State and the Holy Roman Empire – or Italian politics, whether in the Cold War period or the Berlusconi era, the labyrinths of bureaucracy and the legal system, a colonial past, the role of the Catholic Church today, and the Mafiosi.

Striking a cautiously optimistic note, he regards much of Matteo Renzi's progressive new government's remit as providing Italy "with a new dream". Rather than the world-weary opinion that "the best we can hope for is to manage the decline", he senses possible momentum. What Machiavelli expressed some 500 years ago, the discovering of "the virtue of an Italian spirit", may yet win the day.