In March 1912, twenty-nine-year-old Benito Mussolini was just a provincial Marxist. Just four months later, he burst onto the national scene, leading the revolutionary current that seized control of the Socialist Party. In the months that followed, as editor of Avanti!, he was idolized by the masses. But in the autumn of 1914, he supported intervention in the Great War: then, within days, he lost all support and was branded a traitor. When he founded the Fasci di Combattimento in March 1919, he gathered only a few hundred members: that fascism was a noisy but marginal movement. In the November general elections, in fact, Mussolini received fewer than five thousand votes, and was tempted to abandon politics. Emilio Gentile tells the story of a Mussolini who was in many ways unknown: not revolutionary, not anti-capitalist, not even a "leader": an isolated politician, who defined himself as an "adventurer of all paths." And three years later, with unscrupulousness, he is ready to deny himself in order to gain power.