Italy Today

For this Perspective a distinguished group of Italy’s outstanding political and literary figures have written on many different aspects of their country’s postwar achievement and cultural situation. Taken together, these statements make up a dramatic story of a people’s amazing recovery from two decades of suppression followed by a destructive war.

The creative work which is also assembled here — short stories, poetry, examples of new architecture, and reproductions of painting and sculpture — reveals the vitality which has again placed Italy in the vanguard of world culture. It is clear that the artistic traditions of a great past are being carried forward in new and significant directions.

Earlier supplements in this series have been devoted to the Arab World, Brazil, Burma, Germany, Greece, Holland and Belgium, India, Indonesia, and Japan. They have been assembled in co-operation with the Atlantic editorial staff by Intercultural Publications Inc., a non-profit corporation established to work in the field of cultural exchange.

The preparation of this Perspective of Italy has, in part, been made possible by support from The Ford Foundation, under one of its programs which seek to increase mutual understanding throughout the world.