Historical Studies Book Talk with Sergio Luzzatto
The First Fascist: The Sensational Life and Dark Legacy of the Marquis De Morès
Wednesday, October 21, 2026
5:00 p.m. | Reception
5:30 p.m. | Talk
Rubenstein Commons Café

Who was the Marquis de Morès—and why call him the first fascist? Sergio Luzzatto retraces the astonishing life of a French aristocrat who became a cowboy entrepreneur in the American West, a duelist and antisemitic agitator in Paris, and an adventurer killed in the Sahara. His story reveals how the political passions and theatrical violence of the nineteenth-century "fin de siècle” helped shape the fascist future. 

Sergio Luzzatto is Professor of Modern European History at the University of Turin. From 2020 to 2026, he held the Emiliana Pasca Noether Chair in Modern Italian History at the University of Connecticut. His many books include Primo Levi’s Resistance, Moshe’s Children, and Padre Pio: Miracles and Politics in a Secular Age, which won the 2011 Cundill Prize in History.

Labyrinth Books will be on site to offer The First Fascist: The Sensational Life and Dark Legacy of the Marquis De Morės (Harvard University Press, 2026) for sale.
 

Register below to attend.