The Letters of Sacco and Vanzetti (Penguin Classics)
by Nicola Sacco, Bartolomeo Vanzetti
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Book Summary Information
Author: Bartolomeo Vanzetti, Nicola SaccoEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2007-08-28
ISBN: 0143105078
Number of pages: 352
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Book Reviews of The Letters of Sacco and Vanzetti (Penguin Classics)
Book Review: Polenberg of Cornell
Summary: 3 Stars
Polenberg of Cornell University The introduction to The Letters of Sacco and Vanzetti (Penguin Books 1997) by Professor Richard Polenberg is richly informative. The publication is timely and useful. Readers must ask whether these letters offer a clue to the moral character of convicted murderers Sacco and Vanzetti. John Nicholas Beffel, radical journalist who roomed with chief defense counsel Fred Moore during the Dedham trial, declared in "The New Republic," December 29, 1920, that Vanzetti was a "philosophical anarchist." In "The Case of Sacco and Vanzetti" (March 1927), Harvard Law School Professor Felix Frankfurter called Vanzetti "a dreamy fish peddler" (p. 101). Bruce Bliven, "managing editor of the liberal New Republic" (a phrase from American National Biography), wrote of Sacco and Vanzetti: "Their faith is philosophical anarchism." See TNR: June 22, 1927, p. 121. When an unknown reviewer in the April 1929 issue of the anarchist journal "The Road to Freedom" argued that Upton Sinclair's novel "Boston" was the work of an unfit historian, Sinclair replied angrily in the June issue: "It is a fact that Sacco was a 'Militant Anarchist.'" Anarchist editor Hippolyte Havel agreed. In the August 1929 issue of "Lantern" Walter Lippmann wrote: "By every test that I know of for judging character, these are the letters [The Letters of Sacco and Vanzetti] of innocent men." Note: The brackets are by Lippmann Frederick Allen (Only Yesterday, 1931) said Vanzetti was "clearly a remarkable man--an intellectual of noble character, a philosophical anarchist of a type which it seemed impossible to associate with a pay-roll murder." Alfred Jules Ayer, Professor of Logic at Oxford, reviewing Francis Russell's 1962 book on Sacco and Vanzetti, wrote: "Both men were active anarchists of an idealistic kind." Ayer said the letters of Vanzetti revealed "a man of great swetnesss and nobility of character." See New Statesman: 5 July 1963. Sacco-Vanzetti scholars who met at the Boston Public Library on October 26 and 27, 1979, reminded readers that time is a great corrective. Professor Nunzio Pernicone, on the second conference day said: " . . . these men [Sacco and Vanzetti] were not philosophical anarchists; they were genuine, militant revolutionaries." See "Sacco-Vanzetti: Developments and Reconsiderations--1979," the 1982 publication by Trustees of the Public Library of the City of Boston. In "Sacco and Vanzetti: The Anarchist Background," a 1991 publication by Princeton University Press, Professor Paul Avrich wrote: "Both [Sacco and Vanzetti] were ultra-militants, . . ." See p. 161 for Avrich's citation to Sinclair's letters that acknowledge the militancy of Sacco and Vanzetti. On page xxxix of his Introduction, Polenberg calls Edmund M. Morgan a historian. In fact, Morgan is called Royall Professor of Law at Harvard University on the back cover of the 1978 reprint of "The Legacy of Sacco and Vanzetti," that 1948 book by Joughin and Morgan that Tom O'Connorr said had educated a generation of college students and professors. Polenberg's assertion (p. xxxix) that Joughin and Morgan, . . .believed Sacco and Vanzetti innocent, . . ." must be severely qualified. Morgan said Ehrmann's book, "The Untried Case: The Sacco-Vanzetti Case and the Morelli Gang," failed to convince him that the Morelli gang, not Sacco and Vanzetti, had committed the crime at South Braintree. Morgan also said that if Sacco and Vanzetti "were alive today [1934] and were to be tried again, . . . and if a verdict were returned, it could not be set aside as contrary to the weight of evidence, at least against Sacco." See Harvard Law Review, January 1934. Morgan has more telling concessions in the book he and Joughin published in 1948. On pp. 55-56 he calls Vanzetti's Plymouth trial fair, the verdict just. On p. 46 Morgan writes: " . . . this cross-examination, taken alone,tends strongly to show that a group of Italians had framed an alibi for Vanzetti and had coached this bright youngster [Beltrado Brini] to tell his story with details which would tie in with the incidents related by other witnesses." On pages 48-49 Morgan says Vanzetti's statements on the Plymouth trial are suspect. A handbook on the two disputed trials is "Kill Now, Talk Forever: Debating Sacco and Vanzetti," an ebook by 1stBooks Library. Soft cover issue will be available before the end of summer....
Summary of The Letters of Sacco and Vanzetti (Penguin Classics)
Commemorating the eightieth anniversary of Sacco and Vanzetti's execution-with a new cover and new forewordElectrocuted in 1927 for the murder of two guards in Massachusetts, the Italian-American anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti defied the verdict against them, maintaining their innocence to the end. Whether they were guilty continues to be the subject of debate today. First published in 1928, Sacco and Vanzetti's letters represent one of the great personal documents of the twentieth century: a volume of primary source material as famous for the splendor of its impassioned prose as for the brilliant light it sheds on the characters of the two dedicated anarchists who became the focus of worldwide attention.
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