PROTEST: Sacco-Vanzetti and the Intellectuals

The famous Sacco-Vanzetti trial was long a cause celebre among American intellectuals, reduced by them to an impossibly simple parable of good and evil. The case is here subjected to an intensive and dispassionate re-examination. The author's conclusions: that Sacco and Vanzetti had a fair trial and that the intellectuals (some of the most famous names of the 1920's) let their enthusiasm for the underdog overshadow their Judgment and knowledge of the facts. Yet the legend, childlike and sentimental as it was, has been valuable as a vehicle of protest and as a source of inspiration for liberals. This book, carefully researched, is aimed at a scholarly audience and therefore cannot compete in general reader interest with Francis Russell's Tragedy in Dedham (McGraw-Hill-1962), the most recent and certainly the most exciting study of the case.