The book proposes a journey into the Italian industrial imagination, through some of the symbolic places from which an idea of modernity has passed: Settimo Torinese, Genoa, Arese, Rescaldina, Sesto San Giovanni, Bagnoli, Pozzuoli, Torviscosa, Porto Marghera, Ivrea, Terni, Valdagno. The author tells of factories still in operation and others that are abandoned. He describes motorway restaurants, workers' villages, urban structures, abandoned areas, also relying on the boundless literary and artistic heritage that the culture of the twentieth century left us. More than obeying a nostalgic need, he seeks to understand and recover the identity of a nation, the humble Italy of peasants and artisans, which within a few years passed from the civilization of nature to the civilization of machines and is now in the midst of globalization--Translated from front flap.