The issue of mathematics textbooks in the correspondence of Giovanni Novi to Enrico Betti during the Unification of Italy

The Unification of Italy represented a political, educational and mathematical turning point; leading researchers worked to raise both the mathematical and political standard in Italy through their active role in the reform of the Italian educational system at the secondary as well as at the university levels. One of the aims was to adapt the elementary books of mathematics to the progress of mathematics, through the translation of new works too. In the Archivio Betti, at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, there are 48 letters that the mathematician Giovanni Novi (1826-1866) sent his friend Enrico Betti (1823-1892) from December of 1850 to October of 1864. Novi translated important treatises on Arithmetic and Geometry, and in their correspondence, they talk about the issue of mathematics textbooks at high schools and new organization of universities