John Foot offers a deeply researched and powerfully written account of one of the darkest chapters in Italian history. Capturing the spirit of this troubled and turbulent era, he traces the personal journeys, political theories and cultural forces that radicalised a generation. An illuminating read that makes a major contribution to the history of political violence and the legacies of 1968

Ross King

If John Foot's The Red Brigades were not so clear-eyed, well-documented and humane, the story it tells would scarcely be believable. A small group of misfits managed to bring Italy's courts to a grinding halt and shake democracy to its foundations. Foot deploys previously unstudied material to reconstruct the Red Brigades' woolly ideology, their cult of violence, their tactics, and the escalating horror of their actions. He is pitiless in exposing how intellectuals and ordinary citizens alike acquiesced to the Red Brigades' reign of terror, and how a generation of journalists failed to question the way victims were dehumanised. A compelling and sobering read

John Dickie