Twenty years: 40 different governments, a new constitution, the first referendum, the transformation of the monarchy into a kingdom and the Senate into a Parliament, the first modern-type elections, the first Special Court for a Prime Minister, an uprising that overthrew a revolution, and the 48-hour war that was not a war. These are just some of the political events that marked the historical course of the modern Greek state during the period 1860-1880.

Following research in private archives, with unpublished secret documents, at the Diplomatic and Historical Archive Service of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and in the minutes of parliamentary sessions, secret processes that led to the dethronement of a king, the overthrow of many governments, and the delineation of new borders in the Balkans come to light. All of the above, along with the current events of those years, are presented through the lens of both domestic and international press.

The role of fake news, scandals, populism, corruption, crime, and the role of the Church are just a few fragments of the mosaic of modern Greek society in the 1860s and 1870s, when the foundations were laid for transforming a weak and institutionally deficient kingdom into a state following Western models. The difficulties were many, the adventures for the Greek people even more, while, in some cases, the mistakes of those directly and indirectly involved proved to be disastrous.

Kandzinos vividly conveys the events in detail, synthesizing and analyzing the internal data, and meticulously studying the facets of a complex and often incoherent political situation […]. In this arduous path, the author is more than careful in the "reading" of the characters; he is never swayed by the easy solution of character judgment, understanding the difficult and complex human networks of the time, but remains focused on investigating the causes, the international correlations, and the eventual delineation of domestic policy.