Sacco and Vanzetti: Bruce Watson

Almost eighty years after their execution, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti still manage to rouse a passionate response when it comes to their trial and the judgments that led to their deaths. The trial should have gone no further than its home state of Massachusetts but it ended up circling the world and creating a firestorm of protest over perceived injustices. In Sacco and Vanzetti: The Men, the Murders, and the Judgment of Mankind, Bruce Watson takes on the case with an astute and carefully neutral air, giving the facts and reserving judgment.

Using an exhaustive amount of letters, court documents, newspaper reports, and the like Watson leads the reader through from the very beginning. He starts with a series of "anarchistic" mail bombs that were to be delivered to several men of high government status. The only people who actually ended up injured were a black maid and one of the bombers but it was enough to set America on edge. In events that would be all to familiar to the modern reader, American newspaper were soon blaring headlines of terrorism. Connections were made to terrorist cells among many Boston-area Italians, Sacco and Vanzetti among them.

All this was bad enough until the daylight payroll robbery happened in a nearby small town. Sacco and Vanzetti were picked up for the crime, even though it was admitted that anarchists "didn't do violence for money, only for freedom". What followed was what almost appears to be a kangaroo court parade of witnesses both for the prosecution and the defense. Neither side seemed to fully be prepared to swear to any of their statements and none of it boded well for the men. The only thing that was certain is that the DA didn't want to be the one who "didn't get Sacco and Vanzetti".

The trial lasted six years and would be held up through appeals, investigations, and stays of executions. American embassies in other countries would be bogged down under streams of protestors who saw the case as nothing more then a a situation of race. Locally the case was hindered by demonstrations, strikes, and bombings that were tied, in peoples minds, directly back to Sacco and Vanzetti. In the end, none of it would make a difference, or save their lives. And we won't ever know if they were responsible for any of the charges that were placed against them. Bruce Watson has brought up many valid points though, and he has articulated them beautifully. It saddens me to think that an error was made in judging these men.
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Hardcover: 448 pages
Publisher: Viking Adult (August 16, 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0670063533
ISBN-13: 978-0670063536
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