"If the energies that have been spent for decades to change the Constitution - moreover with modest and sometimes pejorative results - had instead been used to implement it, ours would be a more just and even happier country".
There is also Liliana Segre, with the book "The polar star of the Constitution" (Einaudi, pp. 96, 12 euros. Edited by Daniela Padoan), which also contains her historic speech delivered on the centenary of the march on Rome presiding over the Senate the first session of the XIX legislature, among the authors who want to celebrate the Italian Constitution, "the most beautiful in the world", for its first 75 years of life.
Since December 27, 1947, when the women and men of the Constituent Assembly, elected on June 2, 1946, promulgated it after about 18 months of work, our Constitutional Charter, which entered into force on January 1, 1948, has guided Italy so far, like a beacon, as the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, also recalled in his end-of-year speech.
For this important anniversary there are many proposals in the library, suitable for readers of all ages, useful to know a text that is always current, to read and re-read to assimilate its values, and which despite revisions and updates has never changed its spirit.
In "Italy and its Constitution.
Una storia" (Laterza, pp. 498, 35 euros) the historian Raffaele Romanelli reflects on how much the republican Constitution has contributed to building Italy and giving it its current form, but also on how our country has used and interpreted it according to one's needs, which have changed over time.The one proposed by Gherardo Colombo in his "AntiCostituzione" (Garzanti, pp.220, 16 euros) is instead a provocative reflection in which the former magistrate, 'rewriting' some of the main articles of the Charter, allows you to re-read with new eyes, between challenges and broken promises, a text too often taken for granted.
Annachiara Valle in "Women of the Republic. A Constitution that becomes real" (San Paolo Edizioni, pp.224, 18 euros) recounts the fundamental role played by the 21 women in drafting the Charter, a small number compared to the men, who were part of the Constituent Assembly, but also recalls the contribution that many others - engaged in and outside politics - have given, in over seventy years, to ensure that the Constitution becomes a reality, from Tina Anselmi to Marta Cartabia, from Franca Villa to Rita Levi Montalcini.
Even "Ventuno" (Edizioni Paoline, pp.200, 14 euros) co-written by Angela Iantosca and Romano Cappelletto pays homage to the 'Mothers' who made the Constitution, in a children's book narrated in the first person by the protagonists.
For young readers it is also "
Among the 'classic' volumes, in addition to the updated editions with the text of the Charter published by Giuffré in 2021 and Giunti in 2022, also that of Giovanni Maria Flick, "In Praise of the Constitution" (Edizioni Paoline, pp. 168, 15 euros): through the history of the Constitution (again the complete text) the president emeritus of the Constitutional Court brings out the relevance of the Charter and the challenges still to be overcome for a more just society.