Soldier's Guide to Rome

Italy: Allied Control Commission, [1944]. 7 x 5 in. Offset. 41, [2] pp. Saddle-stapled in pictorial wraps.

Designed and produced by the psychological warfare branch, this elegantly made booklet features beautiful full-bleed photographs of the sights and artifacts of Rome - “the first capital city to be entered in the task of liberating Europe.” The book ends with a small passage on modern Rome: “Fascism entered on an ambitious program of internal improvements and external expansion which, however outwardly glamorous, had no real basis in sound politics or economics. Hence its final collapse leaves the country ruined and suffering.”

A vertical fold line throughout the booklet, presumably from the soldier’s folding into their pocket in the midst of war. Else very good.