6It is hard to think of a better point of entry into Gramsci's thought than his essay on the "Southern Question." Written on the eve of Gramsci's arrest and imprisonment, this essay anticipates many of the major issues treated in the Prison Notebooks. Indeed, Gramsci himself initially conceived of his project of study and research in prison as an elaboration of the views he had first sketched in the "Southern Question" essay. Verdicchio's edition/ translation of this valuable work does much more than give Anglophone readers access to the text. the introduction, the annotations, and the supplementary materials he provides enable the reader to place Gramsci's essay firmly within the context in which it was composed and at the same time to appreciate the poignancy of its insights for the present time. -Joseph Buttigieg