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23 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Two Men and the World's Judgement, September 10, 2007
There are certain events in our history that still create a disproportionate emotional response. Partly because, as a society, we do not agree on what occurred, we still debate who killed JFK and why. The extent of Julias and Ethel Rosenberg's treachery and the justice of their execution evoke a range of feelings. And the worldwide reaction to the trial, conviction and execution of Sacco and Vanzetti for alleged participation in a robbery and murder in April of 1920 carries its own legacy forward.
Bruce Watson does an outstanding job of creating the historical context in which an anarchist shoemaker and fish peddler become the unlikely basis of a worldwide cause. He covers the investigation, trial, incarceration and aftermath concisely and with telling detail. The portraits of the two Italian anarchists are nuanced and haunting. The oft-vilified Judge Webster Thayer comes alive under the author's pen as do the attorneys for both defense and prosecution.
It is no mean accomplishment by the author to tell much of this story without letting the reader know upon which side his sympathies lie. Watson's respect for the character, if not the innocence, of the accused is obvious, however, when he quotes Vanzetti: "Never in our full life can we hope to do such work for tolerance, for justice, for man's understanding of man as we now do by dying...That last moment belongs to us - that agony is our triumph."
I found the book riveting and finished it in three days. It demonstrates the challenge of balancing social order and individual justice during an emotional era. In so doing, the book carries a valuable set of lessons for our own times. Albert Einstein wrote: "Everything should be done to keep alive the tragic affair of Sacco and Vanzetti in the conscience of mankind. They remind us of the fact that even the most perfectly planned democratic institutions are no better than the people whose institutions they are." Or in the words of Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendall Holmes when asked by his law secretary if justice had been done, "Don't be foolish, boy. We practice law, not justice."
My mother told me when I was a boy that my grandfather played bocce with Niccola Sacco; although I have never found the photograph that supposedly proves this. I was in the Massachusetts State House in 1977 when Governor Michael Dukakis declared Sacco and Vanzetti Day to forever remove "any stigma and disgrace" from their names. (Republicans were not thrilled by this action and NYC Mayor Abe Beame backed down from similar recognition when old wounds made themselves obvious in that city.) I am not totally neutral here. But I found this work complete, compelling and uplifting. I recommend it highly.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Sacco & Vanzetti - a controversial case, July 7, 2009
Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti came to America as Italian immigrants and departed only after being executed in 1927 for having committed a brutal double murder during an armed robbery.
Bruce Watson has taken this often discussed event and written a thrilling page turner that has the feel of fiction rather than history, though one knows the story to be true.
Watson has made an effort to be impartial in the work, but I felt as though he leaned a little on the side of Sacco & Vanzetti. Of course, this could be because of the worldwide protests held during their imprisonment or the obviously prejudiced judge Thayer, since these critical bylines told his story.
Watson has not tried to analyze the crime, the trial or the men - instead, he has tried to provide a fair, balanced account of the events leading up to their execution, and has done a marvelous job of telling the tale.
I would heartily recommend this book to anyone interested - it is an engrossing story, and Vanzetti's final soliloquy at the time of his execution will very nearly move the reader to tears. Bravo for a book so exceptionally well written, and bringing this controversial history battle back to the forefront of historical thought.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A Definitive Account of a Global Phenomenon, January 28, 2008
Watson has put together a thorough study of the men and the global phenomenon surrounding their trial, appeals and eventual execution. I give him a lot of credit, for while he takes a pretty dim view of the trial judge and prosecutor (as well as S&Z's early defense team) he is objective about the question of their actual guilt and innocence.
Watson spends the early part of the book with an introduction to the accused, some family history and laying the political groundwork; but, the real yeoman's work in the book is done in his methodical trip through the appellate review (if it can be called that given that no judge other than the trial judge ever ruled on any element of the appeals - including the trial judge's potential bias). Watson's research shines through in what is a narrative heavily reliant on sources ranging from personal letters to court records and past first person and scholarly work.
Similarly, there are some really eye-opening sequences in which Watson recounts the global fervor that arose around the accusation, incarceration, trial and execution of these two world-famous criminals. As he notes, in many ways, nothing has ever risen to the level that this case and these men did as global political discourse.
Finally, as others have noted, there are some important constitutional, and legal issues brimming just below the surface of Watson's narrative that I think he - correctly - alludes to but nevers indulges in himself. contemporary Guantanamo Bay, the mid-century transformation in criminal trial practice around evidence, the Red Scares, etc. He truly keeps his eye on the ball here in delivering a definitive history not of these men, or their politics; but, of the events surrounding the "judgment of mankind."
JAW
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