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Mussolini's Shadow: The Double Life of Count Galeazzo Ciano. By Ray Moseley. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2000. ISBN 0-300-07917-- 6. Photographs. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. x, 302. $29.95.
Galeazzo Ciano was a vain, arrogant, shallow bully. He was also an incompetent foreign minister from 1936 until he was dismissed by Mussolini in early 1943. But he had an extraordinary run of luck until it ran out in a big way before a firing squad in Verona in January 1944. Ciano was not exactly plucked from nowhere when he was named foreign minister by Mussolini in June 1936 at age thirty-three. He was the son of Costanzo Ciano, a prominent Fascist from Livorno and cabinet minister. More important, he was the son-in-law of the Duce, the husband of Mussolini's favorite child, Edda.
There are two ways to write a life of Galeazzo Ciano. The first would be...