Italiani di Mussolini in A.O.

1937. GARATTI, Celso Maria. Italiani di Mussolini in A.O. 569 pp., illustrated throughout. Large folio, 405 x 305 mm., bound in publisher's cloth with spine made from copper tubes, with onlaid metal axe on the front cover. Bologna: L. Cappelli, 1937. A stupendous object, in a binding that is completely over the top. Fascist bombast at its most preposterous. The binding mimics the fascist fasces, and even though this copy bears the number 1127, presumably, it was not produced in a large quantity, and represents one of the few bindings which could be melted down and put to a more useful existence. The layout shows the surprising influence of the avant-garde of the twenties and thirties, which is at variance with the subject matter, namely the conquest of poorly armed Africans by Mussolini's military might. Surely one of the most striking and rarest of photobooks. Waterstain on front cover, endpapers foxed, otherwise a fine copy.