Books: Man in the Red Flannel Shirt

GARIBALDI & HIS ENEMIES by Christopher Hibbert. 423 pages. Little, Brown. $7.50.

Compared with the grand simplicities of the American Revolution, Italy's struggle for nationhood was an operatic business; the absurd plot seems almost irrelevant to the magnificent sound effects. Its chief character had none of the natural authority of a born grandee like Washington; he was a bizarre, penniless, oratorical adventurer with a wild beard, red shirt, cloak and cutlass.

Giuseppe Garibaldi was also a pure and noble man, whose goodness reproaches a 20th century in which revolutionaries have been most notable for...