In Search Of Sacco And Vanzetti

It was a bold and brutal crime--robbery and murder in broad daylight on the streets of South Braintree, Massachusetts, in 1920. Tried for the crime and convicted, two Italian-born laborers, anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, went to the electric chair in 1927, professing their innocence. Journalist Susan Tejada has spent years investigating the case, sifting through diaries and police reports and interviewing descendants of major figures. She discovers little-known facts about Sacco, Vanzetti, and their supporters, and develops a tantalizing theory about how a doomed insider may have been coerced into helping professional criminals plan the heist. Tejada's close-up view of the case allows readers to see those involved as individual personalities. She also paints a fascinating portrait of a bygone era: Providence gangsters and Boston Brahmins; nighttime raids and midnight bombings; and immigration, unionism, draft dodging, and violent anarchism in the turbulent early years of the twentieth century. In many ways this is as much a cultural history as a true-crime mystery or courtroom drama. Because the case played out against a background of domestic terrorism, in a time that echoes our own, we have a new appreciation of the potential connection between fear and the erosion of civil liberties and miscarriages of justice.

In this groundbreaking narrative of one of America?s 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.

From John Florio and Emmy Award-winning writer Ouisie Shapiro comes a monumental YA nonfiction book about the heartbreaking case of Sacco and Vanzetti, two Italian immigrants who were wrongfully executed for murder. In the early 1920s, a Red Scare gripped America. Many of those targeted were Italians, Eastern Europeans, and other immigrants. When an armed robbery resulting in the death of two people broke headlines in Massachusetts, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti—both Italian immigrants—were quick to be accused. A heated trial ensued, but through it all, the two men maintained their innocence. The controversial case quickly rippled past borders as it became increasingly clear that Sacco and Vanzetti were fated for a death sentence. Protests sprang up around the world to fight for their lives. Learn the tragic history we dare not repeat in Doomed: Sacco, Vanzetti, and the End of the American Dream, an action-packed, fast-paced nonfiction book filled with issues that still resonate today. Praise for Doomed “A riveting true crime story—but who are the criminals? As relevant today as it was a century ago.” - Steve Sheinkin, author of Bomb and Fallout

Commemorating the eightieth anniversary of Sacco and Vanzetti's execution- with a new cover and new foreword Electrocuted 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. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Political activists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were framed and executed for murder in a wave of anti-immigrant hysteria in Boston in the 1920s. Their story is a salutary one, illustrating the way in which anarchists and immigrants were painted as terrorists - a grim reminder of the consequences of using fear as a political weapon. Eventually pardoned in 1977 by Governor Dukakis, Sacco and Vanzetti's case sparked an unprecedented international defence campaign backed by writers, artists, politicians and musicians. It remains one of the most famous political trials in history.

The Sacco and Vanzetti case is probably America’s most controversial court case. One of the most important studies of the case was made by Justice Felix Frankfurter when he was a professor of administrative law at Harvard. It created considerable stir when initially published in 1927. The book was praised and attacked; it was considered “thrilling,” “uncomfortable,” “lucid” and “judicious.” It was destined to become somewhat of a classic in American juridical literature. “The author... has gone through the record of the successive court proceedings, covering thousands of pages of printed matter, and on it has based this judicial résumé... he makes a survey of the case that is wonderfully compact, but complete enough to bring together all the essential developments and present them in a lucid, readable narrative.” — The New York Times “Mr. Frankfurter has very comprehensively analyzed the trial of these two condemned murderers, and a careful study compels the experienced lawyer to stand aghast at the result obtained under the absolute disregard for the rules of evidence and the conduct of a trial by a jurist who is supposed to be without prejudice or partiality.” — Edwin M. Abbott, Journal of the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology “[Felix Frankfurter’s] book on the Sacco-Vanzetti case is a real contribution to the cause of Free Speech; it is, moreover, a thriller... Every lawyer ought to read this slender but powerful volume.” — Morris L. Ernst, The Yale Law Journal “This small volume of barely more than a hundred pages should be read by lawyer and by layman. The reader will then know how the guaranties of justice and liberty may crumble under the destructive influence of class complacency.” — Charles Nagel, Harvard Law Review “Felix Frankfurter in his book mercilessly analyzes both the record of the trial and the affidavits summarizing the after-discovered evidence upon which a new trial was sought... None can read Frankfurter’s able brief without an inner conviction that the defendants are innocent.” — Charles I. Thompson, University of Pennsylvania Law Review and American Law Register “This compelling account will remain an important document in the history of what has become one of the outstanding cases in the annals of criminal justice... [Professor Frankfurter] deserves credit for the courage with which he undertook a task which in the community in which he lives was thankless and unpopular.” — Ernst Freund, Social Service Review “The whole account is set forth in a manner likely not only to capture but to hold the interest of the reader. Besides having been demonstrated, by the attacks upon it, to be reliable, it is no exaggeration to say that the book is really thrilling.” — E. W. Puttkammer, American Journal of Sociology

First published in 1981, this book reassesses the case of Sacco and Vanzetti, two Italian immigrant anarchists living in Boston in 1920. The pair were accused of a payroll robbery and the murder of two guards for which they were arrested and, after a long trial based on inadequate and prejudiced evidence, executed in 1927. In 1977, on the fiftieth anniversary of their deaths, the Commonwealth of Massachusettes issued a proclamation which acknowledged a miscarriage of justice. The Black Flag provides an account of the controversial trial and a re-evaluation of the celebrated case of the Commonwealth’s decision. Brian Jackson puts the trial in the social context of the period and exposes the nature of anarchism by looking at the lives of two of its exponents, resulting in a moving exploration of a series of events that continue to trouble the conscience of America.

Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were Italian immigrants and they were anarchists. Were these their only crimes? Or did they really murder a factory paymaster and his guard in Braintree, Massachusetts, in April 1920? Seven years later, they were both put to death in the electric chair, and the thousands of mourners who followed their funeral cortege thought that they were victims of prejudice. Were they merely killers? In Sacco and Vanzetti, the latest addition to "New England Remembers" series, Eli C. Bortman decodes one of the most fascinating murder cases in New England history. And he considers the significance of a case that continues to cause controversy. Vanzetti believed that he and Sacco were not dying in vain-that their execution would trigger an international revolt of anarchists. This did not happen, but the shock waves continue to reverberate.