A spellbinding biography: the volatile and fascinating life of Gabriele D'Annunzio--poet, bon viveur, and virulent Italian nationalist who prefigured Mussolini--that also traces the early twentieth century's trajectory from Romantic idealism to world war and Fascist thuggery.

Gabriele D'Annunzio was Italy's premier poet at a time when poetry could trigger riots. A brilliant self-publicist, he used his fame to sell his work, seduce women (the great actress Eleonora Duse, among them), and promote his extreme nationalism. At once an aesthete and a militarist, he enjoyed risking death no less than making love, and he wrote with equal enthusiasm about Fortuny gowns and torpedoes. In 1915 his incendiary oratory helped drive Italy into the First World War, and in 1919 he lead a troop of mutineers into the Croatian port of Fiume, where he established a delinquent city-state. Futurists, anarchists, communists and proto-fascists descended on the place, along with literati and thrill-seekers, drug dealers and prostitutes. After fifteen months the regime was brought to an end, but it would have its sequel: three years later, the fascists marched on Rome, belting out anthems they'd learned in Fiume, Mussolini consciously modeling himself after the great poet. This compelling biography is a revelation both of D'Annunzio's flamboyant life and of the dramatic times he helped to shape.