ROME - History condemns Italy's World War II dictator Benito Mussolini for his crimes, but a new book by his son depicts Il Duce as a caring father, who loved music and cried at the wedding of his beloved first-born daughter.

The look at Mussolini's private side in Romano Mussolini's fast-selling "My Father Il Duce" has rekindled a heated debate in Italy about how to treat the infamous leader. The debate, like that sparked in Germany by a film on the last days of Adolf Hitler, is sensitive in a country that many say hasn't come to grips with its Fascist past.

"There's the psychological risk of identifying more with a man presented as a good father or seen with his wife and children," said Sergio Luzzatto, a professor of modern history at Turin's University.

The book is not the only attempt to polish Il Duce's image.

Another book, titled "Eating with Il Duce", written by Romano's former wife Maria Scicolone, reveals the dictator's culinary tastes. Their daughter, Alessandra Mussolini, a longtime lawmaker in the National Alliance right-wing government party, has recently founded her own movement to defend her grandfather's name.

"Looking at Il Duce as from a keyhole is a long-standing temptation that doesn't seem to end," said Luzzatto, the author of the recently published "The Crisis of Anti-Fascism". "But today, through modern media and TV, it penetrates every household and gains political and historical respectability."

"My Father Il Duce" does not go into the history of Mussolini's political rise and fall, or address the dark pages of the 20-year-long Fascist dictatorship, which began when Mussolini gained power in 1922 and ended in ruin in World War II. During the dictatorship, opposition parties were outlawed, media were tightly controlled, and after the 1938 racial laws Jews were persecuted.

Instead, the 170-page account depicts Mussolini as seen through the eyes of his children, shows his habits and tastes, and includes family photos: Mussolini during a picnic with his family, or holding a 2-year-old Romano on his shoulders. But it also shows him in military uniform and being rescued by the Germans after being held briefly by the Italian army when the government surrendered to the Allies.

"He sometimes gave the impression he was living for others, rather than for himself," Romano Mussolini writes of his father. Il Duce took an interest in his children's report cards in school, he adds, and "never raised his voice, but one of his famous stern looks was enough to make us anxious."

A jazz musician and a painter, Romano Mussolini was 17 when he last saw his father in April 1945, 11 days before the dictator was killed. Until now, he has refrained from discussing his father's legacy.

The book came out in mid-September, and has sold all of the first edition's 16,000 copies, said the Rizzoli publishing house. Another 5,000 copies have been published, while negotiations are under way to translate it in other languages.

The book's presentation last month on a popular show on state-run RAI-TV sparked an outcry, with one commentator saying the show looked like a "soap opera of the Mussolini family."

"Two hours of history about a nice and sporty Italian, who was a good husband and a great father, an affectionate father-in-law, an unforgettable grandfather. Who incidentally happened to be a dictator for two decades," wrote Curzio Maltese, a commentator in the left-wing newspaper La Repubblica.

Some contend that talking about Mussolini, even his private side, will help the country deal with its past.

"The time has come to listen to the reasons of those who were defeated," wrote right-wing commentator Marcello Veneziani. "This is true ... for the whole country if it wants to come to terms with its past, in a civilized way, to digest it and overcome it without removing or demonizing it."

The controversy follows a similar one in Germany, where the film "The Downfall" raised questions over whether Hitler should be portrayed with a human touch.

Among the movie's fiercest critics was filmmaker Wim Wenders, who has criticized the film for not taking a stand in showing Hitler's last days in the bunker and for inadvertedly de-emphasizing the Nazi horror.