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Rating: 
Summary: Not Recommended.
Review: Awful, absolutely awful. Don't have words in my vocabulary to describe how awful this book is. It is written in the strange style of a disciple writing about his beloved master. It doesn't seem to contain any research. It's mostly a comic book account of Garibaldi, without the pictures (except the cover sketch, done by the author himself).
Rating:
Summary: Not Recommended.
Review: Awful, absolutely awful. Don't have words in my vocabulary to describe how awful this book is. It is written in the strange style of a disciple writing about his beloved master. It doesn't seem to contain any research. It's mostly a comic book account of Garibaldi, without the pictures (except the cover sketch, done by the author himself).
Rating:
Summary: A pathetic piece of vanity publishing
Review: Books published at the author's own expense really should contain a warning on the seller's site. If no reputable publisher will touch it, it's likely to be pretty bad. And this one is. I was unlucky enough to buy the book before it was reviewed on site. How I wish I'd waited! It truly is appalling. I didn't know enough about the subject to recognise the historical errors, but the bad grammar, patronising style and nauseating 'folksy' wisdom made reading it a very unpleasant experience.
Rating:
Summary: Abysmal
Review: LiPira is a renaissance man, according to the cover blurb he is a retired dentist who plays golf. Unfortunately he's not much of a historian. You wouldn't want a historian to drill your teeth, and as "Garibaldi" demonstrates, it's probably not a good idea to have a dentist write your biographies. I was suckered by the two previous reviews, but after a dozen pages I realized that the author's mother and sister wrote them, because no discerning reader could call this book excellent. Among its many flaws:Research: the bibliography lists eight works, none less than twenty years old, none apparently in Italian, and none primary sources. Its seems LiPira read a handful of biographies and decided to try his hand at it. Tone: It reads like some misbegotten 1940s communist propaganda. Garibaldi is a "noble leader" who "must fulfill his destiny". Alternately the "true messiah", "megahero", "demigod" and, laughably, a "guru of libertarianism, so to speak". We read that a "swell of adoration built to a tidal wave of idolatry" and "The Neapolitans were awed by his invincibility". He is a great lover whose "wiry constitution enamored him to all in the boudoir". His troops were "feverish in their passion to begin this momentous invasion" and "follow their glorified hero to higher levels of achievement". Pretty steamy stuff. Bad guys are "imperialists" and "royalists". Interesting since Garibaldi renounced republicanism in 1851 and spent his career fighting for a king and for a time was dictator of Sicily. LiPira resorts to marxy prose to demonstrate Garibaldi's appeal to "the masses", even criticizing merchants who disliked Garibaldi because he "impounds" their goods to feed his troops. Garibaldi was a brilliant general, but it's not necessary to disguise the fact that he was also an ambitious mercenary. One annoying riff is LiPira's strange failure to grasp the relationship between military and political power. He mewls about "political interference" and how "politics once again nullified the noble sacrifice of so many gallant men", without considering the political ends for which they were sacrificed. When Garibaldi once persisted in fighting after a war had ended, LiPira acts as though he was abandoned by conniving politicos. Perhaps the fact that Garibaldi disguised his lust for adventure with contradictory ideologies explains his pathological distrust for politicians. The book fails to engage in any real political analysis. And it is often inaccurate: "Millions [in Marseilles] were dying each year" of cholera; "Guerrilla warfare was born in the nineteenth century"; characterizing ancient Rome as a society of "liberated people, ennobled men, and guardians of human rights". Italy "failed in its first attempt to join the League of Nations" in 1866. Once LiPira has Garibaldi retreating so as not to "pit Italians against Italians and lead to a civil war", while for fifteen years he has been fomenting civil war by leading his Italian troops against other Italians. The French had "forty cannons, forty-eight artillery pieces, and various howitzers" (howitzers are a type of cannon, and cannon a type of artillery - an odd error in a military biography). San Marino is "a small old republic", without comprehending that its tactical value to Garibaldi and the very reason that this small republic got to be an old republic is that it sits atop a mountain without good road access. Grammar: apparently English syntax and usage aren't a part of the dental school curriculum. LiPira can't seem to get the hang of matching subject to verb: "weakness and fragility was evident". Readers will enjoy the inventive usages: "abstract poverty" (vice abject), "offshore" (vice onshore), "reactionaries" (vice revolutionaries), and "lie" as the past tense of "lie", as in "Garibaldi lie in a stupor". Some phrases are nearly incomprehensible: "ethereal personification", "obvious casualties", "It took until June for the sailing of the Neapolitan army to depart", "his talented saber in hand", "Garibaldi presented the taking of Venice via Dalmatia and the Balkans but with governmental ties." in a battle, his "ammunition dwindled to an embarrassing minimum", "He was adamant in his belief that life is not for the privileged", "each town they passed was more friendly than the next". The death of Garibaldi's beloved wife's is described as "unwelcome". For good measure there are ethnic slurs: "subtle" Sicilians and "warlike Prussians". Readers will get a kick out of the redundancies: "freedom and liberty", "violent battle", "due to his recuperative powers, he recovered.", his biography included an "episode from his life", "more incessant", "a ditch that served as a trench", "long two month voyage", "both fear-inspiring and terrifying", "aggressively attacked", those killed are "lost forever", "raves and adulation", "the royalist king", "disarray and disorder", and "prior history". LiPira is compelled to state the obvious: "Little did he know what the future had in store", an attack was "designed to disable the enemy and bring victory", he patiently explains that computers did not exist in 1807, and later that the Statue of Liberty (not yet built) "had not gained [its] place in history, as yet". e.e. cummings once teased Warren Harding for writing a sentence with seven grammatical errors. LiPira has created the biographical equivalent, cramming all this into a mere 120 pages. So, while it reads like a vanity book published by a hobbyist writing in his den, at least it doesn't take very long. Oh, the worst, the very worst thing about this book is that Garibaldi's name is misspelled on the spine.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Biography
Review: This was one of the most interesting books on Italy i have ever read. Very enjoyable indeed! I would recommend it to alot of people interesting in Italy.
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