<DIV><DIV>The Italian love affair with sport is passionate, voracious, and all-consuming. It provides a backdrop and a narrative to almost every aspect of daily life in Italy and the distinctively pink-colored newspaper <I>La Gazzetta dello Sport</I> is devoured by more than three million hungry readers every day. <DIV> </DIV><DIV>Narrating the history of modern Italy through its national passion for sport, <I>Sport Italia</I> provides a completely new portrayal of one of Europe's most alluring, yet contradictory countries, tracing the highs and lows of Italy's sporting history from its Liberal pioneers through Mussolini, the 1960 Rome Olympics to the Berlusconi era. By interweaving essential themes of Italian history, its politics, society, and economy with a history of the passion for sport in the country, Simon Martin tells the story of modern Italy in a fresh, new, and interesting way, illustrating how and why sport is so strongly embedded in both politics and society, and how it is inseparable from the concept of Italian national identity. Showing sport's capacity to both unite and deeply divide, this book reveals a novel and previously unexplored element of the history of a society and its state, which will be an essential read for sports fans, historians, and students alike.</DIV></DIV></DIV>