Boston Book Review
"a remarkably cogent account."
Book Description
When the American Bar Association recreated the trial of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg on the fortieth anniversary of their execution, the jury acquitted the "mock Rosenbergs," finding that in today's courts they would not have been convicted of espionage. The 1950s trial of the Rosenbergs on charges of "Atomic Spying" and "stealing the secrets of the Atomic bomb" was a major event of Cold War America, galvanizing public opinion on all sides of the question. Secret Agents presents essays by lawyers, cultural critics, social historians and historians of science, as well as a reconsideration of the Rosenbergs by their younger son, Robert Meeropol. Secret Agents gives new resonance to a history we have for too long been willing to forget.
About the Author
Marjorie Garber is Professor of English and Director of the Center for Literary and Cultural Studies at Harvard University; she and Rebecca Walkowitz are also co-editors of Media Spectacles (Routledge 1993).
Secret Agents: The Rosenberg Case, McCarthyism and Fifties America FROM THE PUBLISHER
When the American Bar Association recreated the trial of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg on the fortieth anniversary of their execution, the jury acquitted the "mock Rosenbergs," finding that in today's courts they would not have been convicted of espionage.
The 1950s trial of the Rosenbergs on charges of "Atomic Spying" and "stealing the secrets of the Atomic bomb" was a major event of Cold War America, galvanizing public opinion on all sides of the question. Secret Agents presents essays by lawyers, cultural critics, social historians and
historians of science, as well as a reconsideration of the Rosenbergs by their younger son, Robert Meeropol. Secret Agents gives new resonance to a history we have for too long been willing to forget.
record...Walkowitz and Garber should be both congratulated and widley read, for assembling a collection that leaves readers less comfortable for having spent time with this book (Boston Book Review,Dec.1995)
(The Boston Book Review)