Although ultimately unsuccessful, the examination of the Canadian
Sacco and Vanzetti solidarity movement gives critical insight into the radical left in the 1920s.
Sacco and Vanzetti were arrested, charged with the crime, and put on trial, at a moment of great prejudice against southern and eastern European immigrants, and great (and to some extent justified) fear of anarchists and communists.
A chapter gives an overview of the subjectivity of evidence, using examples from the
Sacco and Vanzetti case to Ward Edwards' defense of Bayesian thinking to reviews of The Da Vinci Code.
(
Sacco and Vanzetti were executed six years later).
--Woody Guthrie, Two Good Men, from Ballads of
Sacco and VanzettiThe first of the three interrelated chapters focuses on the Left's outraged response in Paris to the trials and executions of
Sacco and Vanzetti on American soil.
Bruce Watson is the author of four acclaimed books of American history, including
Sacco and Vanzetti, Freedom Summer, and Bread and Roses, each published by Viking.
More than just an intriguing group biography and fascinating account of liberalism and constitutional law, this book also offers an absorbing look into significant early and mid-twentieth-century historical events, such as
Sacco and Vanzetti, the Great Depression, Japanese internment during World War II, the Nuremberg Trials, the Cold War, and the Civil Rights Movement.
Supreme Court wailed in pain and outrage, while the world reacted as it reacted to the killing of
Sacco and Vanzetti, and as it has reacted to each of our governments' barbarisms down through the years.
Here's a sampling of topics: the finding of Neolithic drawings at Catalhoyuk in Turkey is a fraud; ancient Egyptian obelisks were raised by a hitherto undiscovered technology; the Greek city-states were "democratic" by our modern American definition; Pushyamitra Sunga, a Hindu ruler in the second century BCE, was a great persecutor of the Buddhists; the Mayan kingdoms died out from disease; Columbus intentionally underestimated the circumference of Earth in order to get funding; Lincoln maneuvered the South into firing the first shot at Fort Sumter;
Sacco and Vanzetti were innocent; and, the final topic of the set: it was reasonable for George W.
Lesbian filmmaker Nicole Opper's credits include producing the Emmy-nominated The Killer Within (Toronto International Film Festival, Discovery Channel),
Sacco and Vanzetti (Winner of Best Historical Film by American Historical Society), and Here TV's five-part documentary series, LSS.
The controversial trials of anarchists
Sacco and Vanzetti the frightening schemes of the Ku Klux Klan and the difficult birth of The New Yorker magazine--all these period markers combine to give the reader a well-rounded impression of 1920s' America.