Fourth of seven children of Francesco Gramsci and Giuseppina Marcias, Antonio, or Nino, as he is called in family, is born in Ales in the province of Cagliari, January 22nd 1891. His father, son of a colonel of the Borbonic police native of Albania, works in the office of the register of Ghilarza. In this town, situated in the heart of Sardinia, on the border of a vast basaltic highland, on the right shore of the river Tirso, Antonio will live his childhood, educated with love from his mother, a cultured and sensitive woman. The development of the child is seriously harmed by an illness, and in vain, the sanitary cares will try to arrest its deformation. In 1892 his father, after a sad judicial story that overwhelms him, is suspended from the employment and Antonio as his brothers, will have soon to look for a job. Achieved the elementary license with the average of ten, he is forced, because of the economic conditions of the family, to study autonomously. Only in 1905 he can take back the studies in gymnasium of Santulussurgiu. Achieved the gymnasium license in Oristano High school, in 1908 he will enroll himself in the high school Dettori of Cagliari. Renato Figari, Antonio's companion in high school remembers that, after an initial period of disorientation, Gramsci, with many young people of the high school Dettori participates in the" battles" for the affirmation of the free thought and in cultural and political discussions that are held in the anticlerical circle": The martyrs of the free thought: Jordan Bruno.” He lives in a poor pension in the street Principe Amedeo, then it moves to another in Corso V. Emanuele, even more modest. To school he distinguishes himself among the companions for his cultural interests, read a lot and he reveals strong tendencies for exact sciences and for mathematics. Cagliari, in that time, is culturally vivacious, where spread the first social agitations, that will influence in the formation of the socialist ideology in Gramsci. In the city two theaters, some cinemas and circles work with concert rooms and conference rooms. Some daily paper are published: “l’ Unione Sarda”, “il Paese”, that had radical tendencies and “il Corriere dell’Isola”, with clerical tendencies. Raffa Garzia, director of “Unione Sarda”, appreciate Antonio’s intellectual qualities and in the summer of 1910 submits him the task of correspondent from Aidomaggiore. The July 26th of the same year appears the first article of Antonio: a brief but witty chronicle on the carrying out of the local elections. The following year Gramsci brightly concludes the high school studies and goes to Turin, after having won a scholarship that will allow him to frequent the faculty of Letters for modern Philology. Turin is a city where the industries, that have eliminated the weakest competitors, are already developed (Fiat, Lancia…). The strong industrial development has conferred a new aspect to the city, that, around 1909, holds around 60.000 immigrants that work in factories. Because of the big concentration of workers and the advanced role of the industry, the syndicate constitutes an active and dynamic presence in the city, sustained by an big mobilization by the workers. The initiatives of struggle in the factories bring to the constitution of the first inside committee and the election of delegates between the workers, that sit, during the controversies, to the table of the negotiations with the main representatives. It is in this period of strong social nervousness that Gramsci lives his university years and matures his socialist ideology. It studies the productive trials, the technology and the organization inside the factories and he tries to make acquire the conscience and the pride to the workers. In Turin he frequents also the environments of the Sardinian immigrants; the interest for its native land will be always strong in him, both in general reflections on the southern problem, on the habits, on the language, on the places and on the people of the infancy; recurrent themes also in the years of maturity. From 1915 he actively participates more and more in the Italian political life with articles published by the “Avanti” and from the “Grido del Popolo”. In 1917 is published "La città futura", unique number completely edited by Gramsci, whose background theme is the opposition between the order of the bourgeois society and the order of the socialist society, where he affirms the concept of dignity of the human person. In 1919 a new newspaper is born: “L’Ordine Nuovo" (the New Order) whose editing is committed to Gramsci that has Tasca, Togliatti, Terracini and Piero Sraffa as collaborators. In his articles Gramsci affirms that the factory council has to be chosen by all the workers, no matters their political position, so that the workers assumes totally the managing function that is up to them as "producers". The years 1919/20 spend with deep restlessness. In Turin the Confindustria, worried for the development of factory councils, decides to pass to the counteroffensive, the workers go on strike, but they are defeated, because they are not adequately sustained by the P.S.I., that maintains an uncertain attitude on the way of facing the situation. Meanwhile the Fascism starts to spread in a very worrying way. Gramsci, therefore, is willing to give life to a new party, according to the instructions of division already pointed out by the International Communist. From January 15th 1921 in Livorno the 17° national congress of the P.S.I. is held; but the divergences among the various groups, extremists, reformists etc., induces Gramsci and the minority of the communists to definitely detach themselves from the P.S.I. and on January, 21st of the same year, in the historical reunion of San Marco, in Livorno, the Communist Party of Italy is born. At the end of the 1922 Gramsci goes to Moscow as representative of the Communist Party. The stay in Russia will be important both for his political formation and for his private life, in fact he falls in love with a young Russian violinist, Julia Schucht that it will become his wife and from her Antonio will have two children: Delio and Giuliano. In Russia Gramsci deepens his knowledge of Leninism and observes the developments of the dictatorship of the proletariat, this allows him to measure in a different way the problems of the Italian communists putting them in a vision of ampler breath. On April 6th, 1924, after an electoral campaign marked by fascist’s violence and intimidations, the elections are held and Gramsci is elected deputy of the area of Veneto, therefore he returns in Italy after two years of absence and it establishes himself to Rome. Meanwhile the fascist dictatorship dominates the Italian political scene and the opponents of the regime are incarcerated or killed like G. Matteotti was: Gramsci participates in the reunions of the parliamentary opposition, but the antifascist struggle will be fatal for him and in November of 1926 he is arrested because of the fascist exceptional laws and, despite his parliamentary immunity, imprisoned to Regina Coeli in Milano. On November 18 Gramsci is assigned to the confinement for five years to Ustica, where he arrives after a standstill in the jail of Naples and in the one of Palermo. In Ustica he lives in a private house with other political convicts with which he organizes various “courses of culture” according to the degree of preparation of the participants, to the purpose to educate the proletarians, for which it is a duty, he says, not to be ignorant, if they want to be protagonists of the politic situation and creators of a new society. On January 14th 1927 the special court in Milan emit an arrest warrant against Gramsci, who is imprisoned in the jail of St. Vittore, where he doesn't give up reading and to study, despite the impositions of the prison regime. On May 28TH the trial begins and on June 4th he is sent sentenced to twenty four months and five days of prison. Since he suffers from chronic migraine he is destined to the penal house of Turi and he is put in a cell with other five political prisoners. In 1929 he gets the permission to write and on February 8th starts to put down notes and remarks in the first one of the" Notebooks" that they will be 21 in 1933, when he will leave Turi for Civitavecchia, and overall 33 in 1937 . In 1931 Gramsci is stricken from a serious illness, therefore his brother Carlo obtains that an individual cell is assigned to Antonio, where Gramsci tries to organize himself a “normal life”, striving to stay to contact with his relatives and with the real world, absorbed in the study, in the reflection, and elaboration of his political and social thought. In 1934 he sends on the application for the conditional release that is granted him. Gramsci is released in 1937, and he plans to return in Sardinia to recover, but in the evening of April 25th he suffers a sudden and fatal crisis: he is stricken from a cerebral haemorrhage and it dies after two days on April 27th. Of the literary production of Gramsci are remembered: THE YOUTH WRITINGS, THE SOUTHERN PROBLEM, THE LETTERS and THE NOTEBOOKS FROM PRISON In the Letters it prevails the family feeling, the love for his children, for the family ever enjoyed, for his mother, for the distant relatives and for Sardinia. Through the letters to his children, from which he is separated in the years of their early formation, Gramsci tries to make his absence less burdensome, giving suggestions, telling histories he lived or invented and contributing to their education. In the Notebooks he exposes his reflections of historical, literary, political and social character. Antonio Gramsci has shown to possess a deep sensibility and knowledge of the social problems, for which he fought with a strong wish, sacrificing his own life and his own family affections. He gives us such an educational message that shows how he is one of the greater thinkers of our time.