Vita e morte di Sacco e Vanzetti [Life and Death of Sacco and Vanzetti]. New York: Il Martello Publishing Co., 1928.

Vita e morte di Sacco e Vanzetti [Life and Death of Sacco and Vanzetti]. New York: Il Martello Publishing Co., 1928.

The original, published in English in 1927, by International Publishers, is also in the Collection. This, the most dramatic, galvanizing (including after their execution) and dispiriting historical event of the era involving Italian anarchists led to mass demonstrations in Paris, London and elsewhere around the world protesting the injustice of the executions of two immigrant Italians for their political views as much as any activities.

This seemed to be an “instant” (post-execution) biography of those two men who became the most famous of anarchists, written and published first in English, and then translated and published by Tresca’s press in the following year. But in fact, Lyons had spent most of 1921 and 1922 working with Sacco Vanzetti, visiting them often in prison.  

Eugene Lyons (b. 1898, Russia – d. 1985) was an American journalist and writer, a Jewish immigrant from Russia as a child. A Communist sympathizer of Russia in his younger years, Lyons later became highly critical of the Soviet Union after several years there as a correspondent for United Press International.

Eugene Lyons

Il Martello Publishing Co.

1928

19 x 14cm; 195 p.

Italian