Giuseppe Antonio Borgese is noted in Italian literature for his novel Rubè (1921; translated, 1923), for his literary criticism, and for his essays about his life in the United States, which appeared regularly for a time in Il Corriere della Sera and were collected in Atlante americano (1936). A personal and generational autobiography, Rubè tells the story of a young nationalist who urges for the participation of Italy in World War I and joins the army. Witnessing the horror of warfare, the irresponsible behavior of some of his fellow officers, and the martyrdom of soldiers, he quickly comes to understand the limits of nationalist ideology--the same ideology that later plays a major role in the rise of fascism in Italy.

A professor of aesthetics and literary criticism at the University of Milan for many years, Borgese contributed greatly to the critical canon in modern Italian literature, and his essays...