Mussolini’s Secret Weapon: Castor Oil is an interesting sidelight on history. It includes something in particular for modern Americans to think about:

In the years from the March of Rome, 1922 to Italy’s foolish entry into WW2 10 June 1940 sixty five men were executed in Fascist Italy (there were also a dozen or so extra legal killings). In modern Texas (with a population over half the size of 1930s Italy) twenty to thirty individuals are executed a year.