David I. Kertzer

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Maryland

Describes the kidnapping and forced conversion from Judaism to Catholicism of a six-year-old Italian boy in 1858, and explores how this incident began a campaign to end the dominance of the Catholic Church in Italy

The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara

7205dbcc-847e-4ff1-86f4-863396038404-1

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

Arkansas

The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe

PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE From National Book Award finalist David I. Kertzer comes the gripping story of Pope Pius XI’s secret relations with Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. This groundbreaking work, based on seven years of research in the Vatican and Fascist archives, including reports from Mussolini’s spies inside the highest levels of the Church, will forever change our understanding of the Vatican’s role in the rise of Fascism in Europe. The Pope and Mussolini tells the story of two men who came to power in 1922, and together changed the course of twentieth-century history. In most respects, they could not have been more different. One was scholarly and devout, the other thuggish and profane. Yet Pius XI and “Il Duce” had many things in common. They shared a distrust of democracy and a visceral hatred of Communism. Both were prone to sudden fits of temper and were fiercely protective of the prerogatives of their office. (“We have many interests to protect,” the Pope declared, soon after Mussolini seized control of the government in 1922.) Each relied on the other to consolidate his power and achieve his political goals. In a challenge to the conventional history of this period, in which a heroic Church does battle with the Fascist regime, Kertzer shows how Pius XI played a crucial role in making Mussolini’s dictatorship possible and keeping him in power. In exchange for Vatican support, Mussolini restored many of the privileges the Church had lost and gave in to the pope’s demands that the police enforce Catholic morality. Yet in the last years of his life—as the Italian dictator grew ever closer to Hitler—the pontiff’s faith in this treacherous bargain started to waver. With his health failing, he began to lash out at the Duce and threatened to denounce Mussolini’s anti-Semitic racial laws before it was too late. Horrified by the threat to the Church-Fascist alliance, the Vatican’s inner circle, including the future Pope Pius XII, struggled to restrain the headstrong pope from destroying a partnership that had served both the Church and the dictator for many years. The Pope and Mussolini brims with memorable portraits of the men who helped enable the reign of Fascism in Italy: Father Pietro Tacchi Venturi, Pius’s personal emissary to the dictator, a wily anti-Semite known as Mussolini’s Rasputin; Victor Emmanuel III, the king of Italy, an object of widespread derision who lacked the stature—literally and figuratively—to stand up to the domineering Duce; and Cardinal Secretary of State Eugenio Pacelli, whose political skills and ambition made him Mussolini’s most powerful ally inside the Vatican, and positioned him to succeed the pontiff as the controversial Pius XII, whose actions during World War II would be subject for debate for decades to come. With the recent opening of the Vatican archives covering Pius XI’s papacy, the full story of the Pope’s complex relationship with his Fascist partner can finally be told. Vivid, dramatic, with surprises at every turn, The Pope and Mussolini is history writ large and with the lightning hand of truth.

The Pope and Mussolini

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Heavy Hardcover (2 to 4 lbs)

New York

The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * "The most important book ever written about the Catholic Church and its conduct during World War II."--Daniel Silva

"Kertzer brings all of his usual detective and narrative skills to [The Pope at War] . . . the most comprehensive account of the Vatican's relations to the Nazi and fascist regimes before and during the war."--The Washington Post

Based on newly opened Vatican archives, a groundbreaking, explosive, and riveting book about Pope Pius XII and his actions during World War II, including how he responded to the Holocaust, by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Pope and Mussolini

When Pope Pius XII died in 1958, his papers were sealed in the Vatican Secret Archives, leaving unanswered questions about what he knew and did during World War II. Those questions have only grown and festered, making Pius XII one of the most controversial popes in Church history, especially now as the Vatican prepares to canonize him.

In 2020, Pius XII's archives were finally opened, and David I. Kertzer--widely recognized as one of the world's leading Vatican scholars--has been mining this new material ever since, revealing how the pope came to set aside moral leadership in order to preserve his church's power.

Based on thousands of never-before-seen documents not only from the Vatican, but from archives in Italy, Germany, France, Britain, and the United States, The Pope at War paints a new, dramatic portrait of what the pope did and did not do as war enveloped the continent and as the Nazis began their systematic mass murder of Europe's Jews. The book clears away the myths and sheer falsehoods surrounding the pope's actions from 1939 to 1945, showing why the pope repeatedly bent to the wills of Hitler and Mussolini.

Just as Kertzer's Pulitzer Prize-winning The Pope and Mussolini became the definitive book on Pope Pius XI and the Fascist regime, The Pope at War is destined to become the most influential account of his successor, Pius XII, and his relations with Mussolini and Hitler. Kertzer shows why no full understanding of the course of World War II is complete without knowledge of the dramatic, behind-the-scenes role played by the pope. "This remarkably researched book is replete with revelations that deserve the adjective 'explosive,'" says Kevin Madigan, Winn Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Harvard University. "The Pope at War is a masterpiece."

The Pope at War

e653916d-4670-4ead-bac6-2a7ba9bf49ca-1

Illinois

Analyzes the relationship between Pius XI and the notorious Italian dictator, tracing how after coming into power in the same year they forged covert ties to one another to consolidate power and pursue political goals.

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

Florida

The Vatican's Role in the Rise of Modern Anti-Semitism

A groundbreaking historical study--its chief source the Vatican's secret archives--makes irrefutably clear how anti-Semitism at the highest levels of the Catholic Church nurtured the hatred that would ultimately make the Holocaust possible.

The Popes Against the Jews

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David I. Kertzer

The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara

David I. Kertzer

The Pope and Mussolini

David I. Kertzer

The Pope at War

David I. Kertzer

The Pope and Mussolini

David I. Kertzer

The Pope and Mussolini

David I. Kertzer

The Popes Against the Jews