NEW YORK, NY – Author Nicholas Vazzana brings one of the most dramatic and largely forgotten episodes of 19th-century European history to life in The Last Carbonaro: Felix Orsini, Napoleon III, and the Conspiracy That Shook the World.
On January 14, 1858, Italian revolutionary Felix Orsini and his conspirators attacked Emperor Napoleon III in Paris with three bombs. The emperor survived, but the attack killed eight people and wounded more than 100. Orsini was captured, tried, and executed.
Vazzana’s historical novel goes beyond the assassination attempt to explore the man behind it, his revolutionary convictions, his imprisonment and escape, his pursuit of Italian independence, and the extraordinary political consequences of his actions.
The story also has a personal connection for Vazzana. During years of research into Orsini and the Italian Risorgimento, Vazzana traveled throughout Europe and uncovered a remarkable historical artifact: an envelope containing a lock of Orsini’s hair, sent to his family after his execution.
Vazzana spent five years researching Orsini’s life and the political world surrounding him, drawing on historical records, archival research, and his own family connection to the Italian struggle for unification.
The Last Carbonaro offers readers a window into a turbulent period when revolutionaries, emperors, secret societies, and political conspiracies collided, and when one man’s actions would have consequences far beyond the assassination attempt itself.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Nicholas Vazzana is an author, artist, and former television news anchor and co-host. His career included work with CBS stations in the Midwest and New York before he founded Orange Cherry Software, where he spent more than two decades producing multimedia titles. He is also the author of Van Gogh in Paris.
THE LAST CARBONARO
Felix Orsini, Napoleon III, and the Conspiracy That Shook the World
Nicholas Vazzana
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