Daniela Rossini

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Daniela Rossini, former Professor of North American History and Women’s International History at the University of Roma Tre (Rome, Italy), is now retired. She spent three years at Harvard as a Fulbright scholar in the History Department and as a fellow of the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History, to which she has since been periodically affiliated. Her research interests include World War I, Italian-American relations, war relief and propaganda, and women’s transnational history in the first decades of the 20th century. Beyond Italy, her works have been published in France, the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the USA. Her last authored books include: Woodrow Wilson and the American Myth in Italy: Culture, Diplomacy, and War Propaganda, Harvard UP, Cambridge, MA, 2008; Donne e propaganda internazionale. Percorsi femminili tra Italia e Stati Uniti nell’età della Grande Guerra, FrancoAngeli, Milan 2015; and co-editor of 1917. L'inizio del secolo americano. Politica, propaganda e cultura in Italia tra guerra e dopoguerra, Viella, Rome 2018.

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Papers by Daniela Rossini

Simona Tobia, Advertising America: The United States Information Service in Italy (1945–1956) (Milan: LED, 2008, €33.00). Pp. 323. isbn978 88 7916 400 9

Journal of American Studies, Apr 23, 2010

Reviewed by Ira Chernus, University of Colorado at Boulder "The making of words is indeed an act,... more Reviewed by Ira Chernus, University of Colorado at Boulder "The making of words is indeed an act, not a business distinct from the hard, behavioral part of politics," Daniel Rodgers has written. "Political talk is political action of a particular, often powerful, sort." This might well be the motto of Denise Bostdorff, a ªne representative of a group of scholars who deserve much more attention than they often receive: scholars of rhetoric who have turned their skills to illuminating the verbal dimension of the Cold War. As Bostdorff points out in her introduction, policymakers respond to reality as they see it, and the way they see it depends largely on the way they describe it and hear it described by others. Hence, there is no way to separate the verbal from all the other dimensions that make up the full picture of Cold War history. Proclaiming the Truman Doctrine offers a detailed study of one crucial moment in that history, 12 March 1947, when a less-than-healthy President Harry S. Truman stood before Congress and pronounced what Bostdorff calls his credo: "I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures. I believe that we must assist free peoples to work out their own destinies in their own way." Truman used these words to build support for his plan to give several hundred million dollars to the governments of Greece and Turkey, helping them to stave off opponents who the administration believed were Communists. The third point of Truman's credo, "I believe that our help should be primarily through economic and ªnancial aid," masked the true aim: giving massive military aid. Bostdorff sets the stage for this policy in her ªrst chapter, tracing the gradual emergence of Cold War tensions from 1945 to 1947. Historians will not ªnd much new here, though no doubt some will ªnd points to disagree with. But all should appreciate her skillful demonstration that speeches and other public words played a central role (in interaction with other factors) in raising Cold War tensions. The words of others could be all the more inºuential, Bostdorff notes, because Truman remained so ambivalent and thus relatively silent. Bostdorff then reconstructs the bureaucratic processes that gave rise to the speech, showing it as the culmination of "a concerted crisis campaign" (p. 13) orchestrated by the newly inºuential public relations units within the State Department.

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