The hotly-contested Mediterranean naval battles of 1940 initiated rapid developments that changed the face of naval warfare, yet also had echoes of a previous and less complicated era when gunnery, pure and simple, dominated warfare at sea. The actions were fought when the Royal Navy was still evolving its use of naval air power and when radar at sea was primitive and fitted to only a few ships, while Italy's Regia Marina was handicapped by having access to neither. Confronting Italy contains three previously classified Naval Staff Histories describing major naval surface actions of 1940, supported by a modern introduction setting them in context and also illustrates warships involved, using WW2 US Navy Intelligence Dept documents. Confronting Italy is in a series publishing previously classified documents in a new, accessible format. Plans illustrating the events described have been completely re-drawn to include the composition and movements of the Italian actions off Calabria and Cape Spartivento.

Throughout the Cold War, the United States encountered unexpected challenges from Italy and France, two countries with the strongest, and determinedly most anti-American, Communist Parties in Western Europe. Based primarily on new evidence from communist archives in France and Italy, as well as research archives in the United States, Alessandro Brogi's original study reveals how the United States was forced by political opposition within these two core Western countries to reassess its own anticommunist strategies, its image, and the general meaning of American liberal capitalist culture and ideology. Brogi shows that the resistance to Americanization was a critical test for the French and Italian communists' own legitimacy and existence. Their anti-Americanism was mostly dogmatic and driven by the Soviet Union, but it was also, at crucial times, subtle and ambivalent, nurturing fascination with the American culture of dissent. The staunchly anticommunist United States, Brogi argues, found a successful balance to fighting the communist threat in France and Italy by employing diplomacy and fostering instances of mild dissent in both countries. Ultimately, both the French and Italian communists failed to adapt to the forces of modernization that stemmed both from indigenous factors and from American influence. Confronting America illuminates the political, diplomatic, economic, and cultural conflicts behind the U.S.-communist confrontation.

Italy’s 2008 Article IV Consultation describes the country's economic developments and policies. Output has been projected to contract by about 1⁄2 percent in 2008 and 1 percent in 2009, with risks tilted to the downside, linked to a further slowing of global growth and falling consumer confidence. The economy’s ability to rebound quickly is hampered by rigidities in the product and labor markets, a lack of domestic competition, a likely slower pace of industrial restructuring, and weakness of the public finances.