Rome or Death: The Obsessions of General Garibaldi
by Daniel Pick
Jonathan Cape, $246
In his time, Giuseppe Garibaldi seemed Christ on horseback. He campaigned for liberty and justice wherever they were threatened. He was a freedom fighter in Latin America before returning as a hero to lead the battle for Italian unity. His 1,000 red-shirt volunteers defeated a Bourbon army of 20,000 to capture the Sicilian capital, Palermo, and ignite the struggle that led in 1861 to Italian unification.
This brought him worldwide recognition as a courageous, dashing warrior uninterested in political manoeuvring. He was colourful, too, attending parliament in Turin dressed in a poncho and his trademark red shirt. Moreover he was not venal. In 1860, when he stepped aside to ensure Vittorio Emanuele became king of Italy, he retired to the Sardinian island of Caprera, taking with him only seeds, coffee, sugar, macaroni and dried cod.
His life is an oft-told adventure that took the seaman as far afield as Odessa, China, Tasmania, New York, Peru and Uruguay and there is now a revival of interest in Garibaldi, with at least two books being written on him.
Daniel Pick, a psychoanalyst who teaches cultural history at the University of London, doesn't provide a new biography of the 'hero of two worlds'. Rather he examines Garibaldi's attempt, at the age of 68, to ensure the Tiber river was diverted around Rome to avoid its periodic flooding of the city.
