Collection: Interview with History

Overview
Oriana Fallaci's Interview with History (Italian title Intervista con la storia), published in 1976, is a compendium of extended conversations with a series of powerful and controversial figures from mid-20th-century politics and public life. The selection brings together interviews conducted over years of reporting, arranged so that each piece operates as both a standalone encounter and a contribution to a larger portrait of power and personality in a turbulent era. The book emphasizes moments when private temperament and public responsibility collide, producing revelations about ambition, fear, and the limits of leadership.
The structure favors long, uninterrupted dialogues that preserve the rhythm and pressure of the interview situation. Scenes are often set with brief, incisive descriptions that place reader and subject in the same room, allowing Fallaci's questions and the interviewees' replies to create the narrative momentum. Rather than a neutral transcript, the sequence of interviews traces recurring concerns, war, diplomacy, ideology, and the personal cost of authority, so the collection reads as a mosaic of political temperament across nations and cultures.

Style and Themes
Fallaci's interviewing style is unmistakable: direct, confrontational, and intimate. Her questions are blunt and sometimes uncompromising, designed to unsettle and to force candid responses. At the same time, a personal curiosity and a willingness to expose vulnerability give many exchanges an oddly intimate quality; the result is a dialogue that alternates between interrogation and confessional exchange, revealing character as much as policy.
Recurring themes center on the exercise and morality of power. Interviewees are pressed on how they justify difficult decisions, how they cope with violence, and how private drives shape public acts. The conversations probe hypocrisy and conviction alike, and they frequently return to the human costs of statesmanship. Stylistically, Fallaci blends reporting with literary observation: she frames exchanges with tight scene-setting and occasional reflections, allowing rhetorical flourishes and emotional candor to amplify the factual material.

Reception and Legacy
The collection established Fallaci's reputation beyond the routine of news reporting by showcasing a method that fused reportage, literary sensibility, and a combative moral stance. Praise often focused on the courage and clarity of her questioning, while critics sometimes accused her of crossing into sensationalism or imposing her own voice too forcefully. Regardless, the volume had a formative influence on long-form political interviewing and helped set a template for journalists who sought to reveal character through pressure rather than polish.
Over time, Interview with History has been read not only as a record of particular conversations but as a study in the dynamics between interviewer and powerful subject. The emotional intensity and rhetorical directness make the collection a durable example of how interviews can do more than extract information: they can dramatize ethical conflict and humanize, or unmask, those who occupy the levers of history. The book remains a touchstone for readers interested in the craft of interrogation and in the ways personality shapes public life.