Edition:
First Edition [stated], presumed first printing
Publisher:
Cameron Associates, Inc
Published:
1958
Language:
English
Alibris ID:
14033146440
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Seller's Description:
Good in Fair jacket. [6], 441, [1] pages. Inscribed and dated by author in Italian on fep. DJ worn, torn, soiled and chipped and in a plastic sleeve. Carl Marzani was imprisoned in 1950 as one of the first victims of the gathering cloud of McCarthyism, his case a cause celebre. He would subsequently become one of New York s foremost left publishers and, as a writer and polemicist, a distinctive voice of the Cold War years. Right up until his death in 1994, he retained the sense of anger at injustice that burned throughout his intellectual and working life. A passionate belief in the value of democracy informs every page of this book. This novel is more than a little autobiographical. Carl Aldo Marzani (4 March 1912-11 December 1994) was an Italian-born American left-wing political activist and publisher. He was successively a Communist Party organizer, volunteer soldier in the Spanish Civil War, United States federal intelligence official, documentary filmmaker, author, and publisher. During World War II he served in the federal intelligence agency, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and later the U.S. Department of State. He picked the targets for the Doolittle raid on Tokyo, which took place on April 18, 1942. Marzani served nearly three years in prison for having concealed his Communist Party USA (CPUSA) membership while in the OSS. Marzani was born in Rome, Italy. The family emigrated to the United States in 1924 and settled in Scranton, Pennsylvania. He graduated from High School in 1931 with a scholarship to Williams College. There, Marzani became a socialist and joined the League for Industrial Democracy. He began writing and became the editor of the school's literary magazine. In 1935 graduated summa cum laude from Williams College with a BA in English. Marzani thereupon moved to New York. In 1936 he received a Moody fellowship to Oxford University. When the Spanish Civil War broke out Marzani traveled to Spain to volunteer for the Republican army. He commanded troops the Durruti Column, a unit of the anarchist wing of the Republican forces, during late 1936 and early 1937. He resumed university studies and in June 1938 received a BA from Oxford. He eventually got a government job with the Works Progress Administration (WPA) while at the same time joining the CPUSA under a false identity. Marzani joined the CPUSA 23 August 1939, on the day the Nazi-Soviet Pact was signed. As a WPA instructor at New York University, as served as district Organizer for the Communist Party on the Lower East Side of New York. After the German invasion of the Soviet Union in mid 1941, Marzani became director of a popular front anti-fascist organization, and resigned from the Communist party in August 1941. In early 1942 after the United States became involved in World War II, Marzani joined the OSS, the predecessor organization of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Marzani worked under Colonel William J. Donovan from 1942 to 1945 in the Analysis Branch. In 1945 Marzani transferred to the Department of State, where he worked as the Deputy Chief of the Presentation Division of the Office of Intelligence. Marzani handled the preparation of top secret reports. In 1946 Marzani founded and directed Union Films, a film documentary company that had contracts with the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America and other unions to do documentaries. In January 1947 Marzani was indicted for defrauding the government by receiving government pay while concealing CPUSA membership. He was convicted on 22 June 1947, but nine counts were overturned on appeal, while the Supreme Court split 4-4 on a rare rehearing of the last two charges. Marzani served all but four months of a thirty-six-month sentence. In prison, Marzani began work on a book blaming President Harry S. Truman for starting the Cold War. Caught attempting to smuggle a manuscript out of prison in 1950, he was placed in solitary confinement for seven months. In this...
