Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) is widely celebrated as the most original political thinker in Western Marxism and an all-around outstanding intellectual figure. Arrested and imprisoned by the Italian Fascist regime in 1926, Gramsci died before fully regaining his freedom. Nevertheless, in his prison notebooks, he recorded thousands of brilliant reflections on an extraordinary range of subjects, establishing an enduring intellectual legacy.

Columbia University Press's multivolume Prison Notebooks is the only complete critical edition of Antonio Gramsci's seminal writings in English....

This volume contains notebooks 3, 4, and 5, which Antonio Gramsci wrote between 1930 and 1932. Their central themes are popular culture, Italian history, Americanism, and the Catholic Church as a religious institution and politico-ideological force.

In notebooks 6, 7, and 8, Antonio Gramsci develops his concepts of hegemony, civil society, and the state; reflects extensively on the Renaissance, the Reformation, and Machiavelli's political philosophy; and offers a trenchant critique of the cultural and political practices of fascism.