Sacco and Vanzetti: The Men, the Murders, and the Judgment of Mankind |
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by: Bruce Watson List Price: $25.95 Amazon.com's Price: $10.38 You Save: $15.57 (60%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Binding: HardcoverDewey Decimal Number: 345.730252309744 EAN: 9781615554867 Format: Bargain Price ISBN: 1615554866 Label: Viking Adult Manufacturer: Viking Adult Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 448 Publication Date: August 16, 2007 Publisher: Viking Adult Studio: Viking Adult Related Items:
Editorial Review: Product Description: In this groundbreaking narrative of one of Americas most divisive trials and executions, award-winning journalist Bruce Watson mines deep archives and newly available sources to paint the most complete portrait available of the good shoemaker and the poor fish peddler. Opening with an explosion that rocks a quiet Washington, D.C., neighborhood and concluding with worldwide outrage as two men are executed despite widespread doubts about their guilt, Sacco & Vanzetti is the definitive history of an infamous case that still haunts the American imagination. Average Rating:
 Rating:  - ExtraordinaryThis is an amazing true story that simultaneously broke my heart and angered me. Anyone who is interested in the history of our country, and in particular the way immigrants were treated, should read this book. Beautifully written and meticulously researched, the author paints a very vivid picture of the 1920's and the "Red Scare" that was really behind the arrest and conviction of Sacco and Vanzetti. The injustice of their story is quite shocking. The best part of the book is the personal way you get to know Sacco and Vanzetti - their strength and humanity are extraordinary. If you don't have a tear in your eye when you read Sacco's letter to his son Dante on the eve of his execution - you're not human. Needless to say, I highly recommend this book. Rating: - History mediumSacco & Vanzetti is excellent in providing information for the history teacher in need of more depth in covering the 20s. An interesting story with enough detail to help understand the issue and its context. Rating:  - Sacco and Vanzetti: Martyrs or Murderous Crimiinals? Read the book and make your decision!Sacco and Vanzetti were Italian immigrants living in Massachusetts in 1920. They were accused of murdering a guard and a clerk carrying over $15,000 in pay to a company in Braintree, Mass. After seven years they were executed on August 22, 1927. There case is one of the most famous in American history causing riots and protests against their execution in the electric chair. Why? The question is answered by author Bruce Watson: Sacco and Vanezzeti: 1. Lived following anti-foreign sentiment in xenophobic America following World War II. 2. Both men were anarchists who wanted to do away with all governments including the use of violence to effect this end. The Palmer raids were launched in 1919 against anarchist cells in the U.S United States Attorney General Mitchel A. Palmer's home in Washington DC had been bombed; several governmental officals had been the subjects for reprisal by the anarchists. Fear was abroad in the land as organized battled government and police. 3. Massachusetts did not like Italians being ruled by a governmental and judicial class of Boston Brahmins and White Anglo Saxons. Judge Thayer who presided over the trials of S-V. was prejudiced against the defendants. Sacco was married with two small children. He worked in a shoe factory making good money but wanted to return to Italy as soon as possible. He was an anarchist but had never been arrested. During his long imprisonment he went on hunger strikes and exhibited psychotic and disturbing behavior. His wife Rose was a good woman who loved and supported efforts to free him. Vanzetti was a fish peddler man of intellectual tastes. He wrote poetry, read widely and was a strong defender of freedom. Neither he or Sacco were religious. He was unmarried. Both men died in their late 30s. The case was complicated with many witnesses telling different stories at different times. Sacco's gun may have been tampered with. Whether or not they were guilty remains a debatable question eighty years after the Braintree murder. A gang may have been involved leaving the two prisoners innocent of the charges. The case was reviewed by the Massachusetts Governor but despite worldwide cries for clemency the men were doomed. Notables such as Harvard professor and future Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, writers Dorothy Parker, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Upton Sinclair, Robert Benchley and many others. All their hopes and efforts to free Sacco and Vanzetti failed. This reviewer believes they were innocent suffering because of anti-immigrant bias, their flight to Mexico to avoid the World War I military draft and record of being active anarchists. Who knows! The book has been well researched but it can be a chore keeping up with all the people involved and the complex legal issues. An important book on an important book on two tragic figures and the jazz age world in which they lived and suffered. Watson remains agnostic as to whether they were guilty. Rating: - Modern history + true crime=excellent bookPrior to picking up Bruce Watson's "Sacco and Vanzetti" I had yet to come across an uninteresting book, fictional or otherwise, dealing with the social and political struggles that accompanied the first quarter of the 20th century in the United States, and this book did not become the first. Combining a compelling true-crime story with an examination of the larger social and political forces that shaped it, the book manages to take a case that's been endlessly sensationalized and oversimplified for various propaganda purposes and place it squarely in the real world, and endow central players frequently turned into symbols or caricatures with all the flaws and personal oddities of real people. Along the way, Watson details just how a simple robbery and murder in the small industrial town of Braintree, Massachusetts (now best known for its overcrowded upscale mall) eventually evolved into a case that captured the passions of millions the world over. Watson doesn't aim to argue for Sacco and Vanzetti's guilt or innocence, but rather to capture the crippling uncertainty presented by the actual facts of the case and the atmosphere of prejudice and mutual distrust that allowed it to so deeply inflame the era's existing divisions. The seven years of courtroom drama and behind-the-scenes legal maneuvering form the foundation of the story, but it's Watson's evocation of this atmosphere of hysteria and sensationalism surrounding the case that provides the most fascinating reading. The book's faithful recitations of the frequently tortuous and interminable courtroom proceedings can get a bit wearisome, but they do manage to drive home the sheer difficulty of determining guilt or innocence when confronted with reams of inconclusive evidence and conflicting expert and eyewitness testimony frequently undermined by faulty memories and personal agendas. The book's police procedural elements and its ample legal maneuverings and courtroom drama are, of course, supplemented by exactingly detailed portraits of Sacco and Vanzetti themselves, both of whom are brought to life through extended discussions of their relationships, personalities, beliefs, and writings. Watson does take a generally sympathetic view of the story's two central figures, mixing examinations of their politics with personal details of their lives, but without ignoring the legitimate concerns about their possible guilt or the violent acts committed by some of their fellow travelers. Given how difficult it was to achieve any sort of certainty with the facts at hand, it's little wonder the case became a canvas on which Americans (and Europeans, South Americans, and others) projected their wider sociopolitical views. With the working classes and the monied elites increasingly at odds in the U.S. and elsewhere, Sacco and Vanzetti made prime targets for an overzealous prosecutor and intractable, reactionary judge backed by a public that found in two Italian anarchists convenient scapegoats for what they thought ailed the country. At the same time, of course, the two were practically gifts from the heavens for leftists, who were all too eager to turn Sacco and Vanzetti into symbols of the oppression of working people, immigrants, and radicals, with little to no regard for their actual guilt or innocence. The book mainly leaves unanswered the question of how much of a middle ground (if any) existed in public opinion of the case, instead focusing on the most hard-line of posturing and rhetoric from both sides to provide a stark portrait of the tenor of the times that manages to remain relevant to this day. In Watson's telling, opinions about Sacco and Vanzetti's guilt or innocence were based less on a consideration of the facts than on one's view of the American system circa 1920--those who favored the established order and hierarchy arguing for guilt, those who saw exploitation and oppression all over the country proclaiming innocence, and each side digging in deeper with every development that seemed to bolster its position. Ultimately, "Sacco and Vanzetti" transcends its immediate subject to serve as a telling reminder of the divisiveness that grips even the most advanced of societies, and the way people will grasp desperately for a feeling of certainty even when confronted with the most unclear of situations. While the current War on Terror is never mentioned, it doesn't take much of a stretch to see parallels between the rampant fears of violence, intolerance for ambiguity, and with-us-or-against-us mentality that (rightly or not) has come to characterize both Sacco and Vanzetti's era and our own. If one of Watson's goals in writing this book was to document how little things change from decade to decade, it can certainly be considered a success. And for anyone who thinks human behavior is rooted in logic and rational thought, it should serve as a stern reminder of how the world really works. Rating: - Sacco & Vanzetti - a controversial caseNicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti came to America as Italian immigrants and departed only after being executed in 1927 for having committed a brutal double murder during an armed robbery. Bruce Watson has taken this often discussed event and written a thrilling page turner that has the feel of fiction rather than history, though one knows the story to be true. Watson has made an effort to be impartial in the work, but I felt as though he leaned a little on the side of Sacco & Vanzetti. Of course, this could be because of the worldwide protests held during their imprisonment or the obviously prejudiced judge Thayer, since these critical bylines told his story. Watson has not tried to analyze the crime, the trial or the men - instead, he has tried to provide a fair, balanced account of the events leading up to their execution, and has done a marvelous job of telling the tale. I would heartily recommend this book to anyone interested - it is an engrossing story, and Vanzetti's final soliloquy at the time of his execution will very nearly move the reader to tears. Bravo for a book so exceptionally well written, and bringing this controversial history battle back to the forefront of historical thought. Browse for similar items by category: Click to Display |
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