The Letters of Sacco and Vanzetti (Classic, 20th-Century, Penguin) [Paperback]

Nicola Sacco (Author), Bartolomeo Vanzetti (Author), Polenberg (Author), Gardner D. Jackson (Editor), Marion D. Frankfurter (Editor)

Book Description

Series: Classic, 20th-Century, Penguin | Publication Date: August 1, 1997

On August 23, 1927, in Boston, Italian immigrants Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were executed for murder and robbery. This collection of their letters was originally published in 1928 and is now being re-released to coincide with the 70th anniversary of the execution that transfixed America. The case continues historically to be one of controversy and debate.

Product Details

• Paperback: 480 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Classics (August 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0141180269
• ISBN-13: 978-0141180267
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,973,665 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Remarkable and Moving, December 5, 1997

By 

George Grella "Urbane citizen" (Brooklyn) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Letters of Sacco and Vanzetti (Classic, 20th-Century, Penguin) (Paperback)

This is the most important testament to a now largely forgotten tragedy of American politics. Sacco and Vanzetti were essentially convicted and executed for being unpatriotic foreigners, regardless of the crime they were accused of [for which no specific evidence was presented against them]. They waited for seven years in prison before their execution, during which time they wrote these letters. Their English, though it improved through the years, was never fully accomplished. But the results are extraordinary. The letters express ideas about life, society, faith, politics and human feelings, and the often clumsy and misused language actually makes the expression more lucid and more beautiful. The path of trial, appeal and final sentencing runs through clearly, and as the end approaches the letters are inexpressibly heartbreaking, as when Sacco asks his wife to tell his daughter "that I love her so much, and again, so much." This book has been in and out of print since the late 1920's, and is often unavailable in libraries because patrons steal it. It is a blessing that Penguin has brought it back.

5.0 out of 5 stars Sacco and Vanzetti are a Lesson to All, June 19, 2011

By 

Gary L. Puzzella (Allentown, PA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Letters of Sacco and Vanzetti (Penguin Classics) (Mass Market Paperback)

These letters are extraordinary, the narrative along with the letters paint a picture of the times in the early 20th century. They are so relevant, even today. These letters make us think, and examine our lives and our prejudices. Their guilt or innocence is irrelevant; the real question is, can two Italian immigrants who are self proclaimed anarchists, in a Country that claims to defend all beliefs, get a fair trial for a murder they claim they never committed? Read the book, the answer is painfully no. And it makes you think, can certain immigrants today, perhaps wrongly accused of terrorism, get a fair trial? I am afraid of what the answer might be. This book is a must read for anyone who claims the Constitution and Bill of Rights are the most important documents ever written in America.

9 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Polenberg of Cornell, July 16, 2001

By 

Richard Newby (Normal, IL USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Letters of Sacco and Vanzetti (American Biography Series) (Library Binding)

Polenberg of Cornell University The introduction to The Letters of Sacco and Vanzetti (Penguin Books 1997) by Professor Richard Polenberg is richly informative. The publication is timely and useful. Readers must ask whether these letters offer a clue to the moral character of convicted murderers Sacco and Vanzetti. John Nicholas Beffel, radical journalist who roomed with chief defense counsel Fred Moore during the Dedham trial, declared in “The New Republic,” December 29, 1920, that Vanzetti was a “philosophical anarchist.” In “The Case of Sacco and Vanzetti” (March 1927), Harvard Law School Professor Felix Frankfurter called Vanzetti “a dreamy fish peddler” (p. 101). Bruce Bliven, “managing editor of the liberal New Republic” (a phrase from American National Biography), wrote of Sacco and Vanzetti: “Their faith is philosophical anarchism.” See TNR: June 22, 1927, p. 121. When an unknown reviewer in the April 1929 issue of the anarchist journal “The Road to Freedom” argued that Upton Sinclair’s novel “Boston” was the work of an unfit historian, Sinclair replied angrily in the June issue: “It is a fact that Sacco was a ‘Militant Anarchist.’” Anarchist editor Hippolyte Havel agreed. In the August 1929 issue of “Lantern” Walter Lippmann wrote: “By every test that I know of for judging character, these are the letters [The Letters of Sacco and Vanzetti] of innocent men.” Note: The brackets are by Lippmann Frederick Allen (Only Yesterday, 1931) said Vanzetti was “clearly a remarkable man--an intellectual of noble character, a philosophical anarchist of a type which it seemed impossible to associate with a pay-roll murder.” Alfred Jules Ayer, Professor of Logic at Oxford, reviewing Francis Russell’s 1962 book on Sacco and Vanzetti, wrote: “Both men were active anarchists of an idealistic kind.” Ayer said the letters of Vanzetti revealed “a man of great swetnesss and nobility of character.” See New Statesman: 5 July 1963. Sacco-Vanzetti scholars who met at the Boston Public Library on October 26 and 27, 1979, reminded readers that time is a great corrective. Professor Nunzio Pernicone, on the second conference day said: “ . . . these men [Sacco and Vanzetti] were not philosophical anarchists; they were genuine, militant revolutionaries.” See “Sacco-Vanzetti: Developments and Reconsiderations--1979,” the 1982 publication by Trustees of the Public Library of the City of Boston. In “Sacco and Vanzetti: The Anarchist Background,” a 1991 publication by Princeton University Press, Professor Paul Avrich wrote: “Both [Sacco and Vanzetti] were ultra-militants, . . .” See p. 161 for Avrich’s citation to Sinclair’s letters that acknowledge the militancy of Sacco and Vanzetti. On page xxxix of his Introduction, Polenberg calls Edmund M. Morgan a historian. In fact, Morgan is called Royall Professor of Law at Harvard University on the back cover of the 1978 reprint of “The Legacy of Sacco and Vanzetti,” that 1948 book by Joughin and Morgan that Tom O’Connorr said had educated a generation of college students and professors. Polenberg’s assertion (p. xxxix) that Joughin and Morgan, . . .believed Sacco and Vanzetti innocent, . . .” must be severely qualified. Morgan said Ehrmann’s book, “The Untried Case: The Sacco-Vanzetti Case and the Morelli Gang,” failed to convince him that the Morelli gang, not Sacco and Vanzetti, had committed the crime at South Braintree. Morgan also said that if Sacco and Vanzetti “were alive today [1934] and were to be tried again, . . . and if a verdict were returned, it could not be set aside as contrary to the weight of evidence, at least against Sacco.” See Harvard Law Review, January 1934. Morgan has more telling concessions in the book he and Joughin published in 1948. On pp. 55-56 he calls Vanzetti’s Plymouth trial fair, the verdict just. On p. 46 Morgan writes: “ . . . this cross-examination, taken alone,

tends strongly to show that a group of Italians had framed an alibi for Vanzetti and had coached this bright youngster [Beltrado Brini] to tell his story with details which would tie in with the incidents related by other witnesses.” On pages 48-49 Morgan says Vanzetti’s statements on the Plymouth trial are suspect. A handbook on the two disputed trials is “Kill Now, Talk Forever: Debating Sacco and Vanzetti,” an ebook by 1stBooks Library. Soft cover issue will be available before the end of summer....