His book The Factory of Consent was the first historiographical attempt to reconstruct the structure and functioning of the propaganda apparatus of Mussolini’s regime. Cannistraro edited the first critical dictionary on fascism and also researched the history of Italian emigration to the United States. He was the first distinguished professor of Italian American studies associated with the Calandra Institute.
Besides La Fabbrica del consenso, Cannistraro’s books include Civilizations of the World, Il Duce’s Other Woman, The Western Perspective: A History of European Civilization in the West and Blackshirts in Little Italy. In 1993, Cannistraro won the Prezzolini Prize for outstanding contributions to Italian Culture. He was twice a Fulbright fellow in Italy and also received the Howard Marraro Prize.
Born in 1945 and raised on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, Brian Robert Sullivan attended Regis High School (1959-63) and Columbia College (1963-67). He served as a US Marine officer (1967-70) and in Vietnam, received a Silver Star and Purple Heart. He returned to Columbia Graduate School, then did dissertation research in Rome (1973-74). Sullivan taught at New York area private schools (1976-82) while completing his dissertation in 1983, “A Thirst for Glory” on Mussolini and the Italian military, 1922-1936. After teaching at Drexel University (1982-84), Yale University (1984-88) and the Naval War College (1988-91), he took part in planning deception for Operation Desert Storm. Sullivan then became a Senior Research Professor at the Institute for National Strategic Studies in Washington (1991-97). In 1998, he formulated a space warfare strategy for Air Force Space Command.
Thereafter, Sullivan wrote full-time, composing over fifty entries for the Historical Dictionary of Fascist Italy, dozens of scholarly book reviews and some sixty articles on Italian and military topics. Encouraged by Renzo De Felice, over seven years Sullivan and Cannistraro wrote Il Duce's Other Woman which appeared in 1993. After finding Margherita Sarfatti’s memoirs, Sullivan translated and edited them as My Fault: Mussolini As I Knew Him (2014). He is at work on a biography of General Alberto Pariani, Mussolini’s army chief of staff, 1936-39.
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