Tragedy in Dedham

This book examines the 1921 murder trial of Italian-born anarchists Ferdinando Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti.&quote;Incredibly-after all that has been said-the Sacco and Vanzetti case comes up in a major and moving work. This is probably the best, certainly the most painstaking and panoramic book yet written about America's tortuous cause celebre. Francis Russell has produced a remarkable reconstruction, full of conflicting personalities and particulars set against a social background of irreconcilable positions, heartfelt passions. Vanzetti, a fishpeddler who read Darwin and Marx, Dante and Renan, and Sacco, a piece worker with wife and children, were both members of a New England anarchist group, and both were Italian immigrants &quote;nameless, in a crowd of nameless ones.&quote; Accused of murdering a South Braintree paymaster and his guard, their subsequent trial, extending over seven years, influenced the spirit of the twenties from Massachusetts to Europe and ignited a courtroom drama unlike anything seen before (a browbeating district attorney, a self-sacrificing lawyer, a rasping judge, the Madeiros' &quote;confession,&quote; demonstrations, bombings and bombast), only to end in the electric chair for the defendants. It also had its share of double-edged ironies: at a time when anarchists were being secretly liquidated in the Soviet, the Communist International was calling for propagandistic party-line support of the two &quote;martyrs,&quote; and, on the other hand, old Yankee fear of radicalism and revolution was openly prejudicing the jury, thus Sacco and Vanzetti became pawns in the &quote;class struggles&quote; of both sides. As to the author's verdict: Vanzetti was innocent, Sacco guilty; of this recent ballistic tests leave small doubt. A stunning study.&quote;-Kirkus Reviews