David Kertzer Ph.D. ’74 won a Pulitzer Prize in biography for his recent book “The Pope and Mussolini: The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe.”

According to an April 21 BrandeisNOW article, Kertzer credits former University anthropology department chair Alex Weingrod “for steering him toward the study of Italy back in 1969” during his time at Brandeis and for being his mentor. “It was my experience at Brandeis that set me on the path to Italy,” Kertzer told BrandeisNOW.

Kertzer’s book explores the lives of both Pope Pius XI and Benito Mussolini and the ways in which their actions in the Catholic Church and in Italy’s fascist government intertwined. The book, which relies largely on archives that were unreleased until 2002, “challenges the commonly accepted narrative that the Catholic Church fought heroically against the Italian fascists in the 1920s and 30s,” according to NPR. Kertzer’s book details how the Pope “cooperated closely” with Mussolini for more than a decade, “lending his regime organizational strength and moral legitimacy.”

According to BrandeisNOW, this is the second year in a row that a Brandeis alumnus has won a Pulitzer prize—Historian Alan Taylor Ph.D. ’86 won his second Pulitzer prize in history last year for his work “The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832.” The article also lists journalists Thomas Friedman ’75 and Margo Jefferson ’68 as notable University alumni who have received Pulitzers, as well as historian and scholar David Oshinsky, Ph.D. ’71.

Kertzer is a Paul R. Dupee Jr. University Professor of Social Science and professor of anthropology and Italian studies at Brown University. He previously taught at Bowdoin College. Kertzer is currently on sabbatical from the university and is working on a book about the Roman Revolution of 1848. Additionally, filmmaker Steven Spielberg “plans to turn Kertzer’s 1997 work The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara, into a film,” according to the BrandeisNOW article.

“This is a happy time,” Kertzer told BrandeisNOW.