Although man has an inherent capacity for freedom, the concept of liberty and the institutions through which that concept becomes the practice of free societies, are the result not of laws of nature but of conscious creative efforts. What man creates, man can also lose. Those who are convinced that liberty is good and necessary have no right to sit back and let things go when free institutions are threatened. This, man's conscious struggle for freedom, is the thread connecting the episodes in this book. But why write about one individual's small part in the conflict between despotism and liberty? Why an autobiography mostly in the third person? Who cares what happened to an unknown man, or what he did? We should not forget that behind masses and their movements are always individuals, their experiences and their actions. One life reflects thousands or millions of lives. Historians and philosophers write about liberty, but it is through the actions of individuals that ideas become the practice of everyday life. In many countries there would be no liberty today had there not been hundreds of thousands of people whose efforts translated the idea of liberty into free institutions. That is why the book was written. Having endured beatings from Mussolini's fascists, twice exiled from his home in Italy, and political imprisonment, Max forges ahead in his quest to end Italian fascism by joining underground movements and, when war breaks out, enlisting in the British army's Special Operations Executive (SOE) and commissioned to operate in Italy both overtly in uniform as well as covertly behind enemy lines. His first-hand experiences lend credence to "one man can make a difference."
About the Author: Massimo (Max) Salvadori was born in London in 1908 of Anglo-Italian parents, returning to Italy when just a few weeks old. In 1924 he and his father, a professor in Florence, Italy, were severely beaten by Mussolini's Blackshirts, and the family went into exile in Switzerland. Which began Salvadori's 22 year struggle against fascism. He met his English wife, Joyce, when she was studying art in Rome, but soon after was arrested by the fascists and sent to prison. Thanks to his English connections he managed to escape Italy after a year of confinement, and married Joyce in England. In the late '30s the British government asked him to go to America, with family, to organize Italian-Americans as an anti-Fascist group, and then to Mexico to thwart the pro-fascist people there, who were sending radio messages to Nazi subs in the Caribbean. After the war broke out he joined the British army's Special Operations Executive, Italian section, which did most of its work behind enemy lines. In the winter of 1945 he parachuted into northern Italy to organize the liberation of Milan. At war's end he was a lieutenant-colonel awarded the Distinguished Service Order and Military Cross, the second and third highest British decorations. He returned to the United States where he had left his wife and two children, and became a college history professor, with two stints in Paris, one with UNESCO, another with NATO. He passed away in 1995, leaving 29 books of thoughtful insight into political-economic history behind as his legacy.