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An American Tragedy
by Anne Sebba
New York Times bestselling author Anne Sebba's moving biography of Ethel Rosenberg, the wife and mother whose execution for espionage-related crimes defined the Cold War and horrified the world.
In June 1953, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, a couple with two young sons, were led separately from their prison cells on Death Row and electrocuted moments apart. Both had been convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage for the Soviet Union, despite the fact that the US government was aware that the evidence against Ethel was shaky at best and based on the perjury of her own brother.
This book is the first to focus on one half of that couple in more than thirty years, and much new evidence has surfaced since then. Ethel was a bright girl who might have fulfilled her personal dream of becoming an opera singer, but instead found herself struggling with the social mores of the 1950's. She longed to be a good wife and perfect mother, while battling the political paranoia of the McCarthy era, anti-Semitism, misogyny, and a mother who never valued her. Because of her profound love for and loyalty to her husband, she refused to incriminate him, despite government pressure on her to do so. Instead, she courageously faced the death penalty for a crime she hadn't committed, orphaning her children.
Seventy years after her trial, this is the first time Ethel's story has been told with the full use of the dramatic and tragic prison letters she exchanged with her husband, her lawyer and her psychotherapist over a three-year period, two of them in solitary confinement. Hers is the resonant story of what happens when a government motivated by fear tramples on the rights of its citizens.
"Riveting...Could there be a better time to review 'what can happen when fear, a forceful and blunt weapon in the hands of authority, turns to hysteria and justice is willfully ignored'? A concise yet thorough account of a 1953 miscarriage of justice with alarming relevance today." ―Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"A redefining and redemptive work of astute protest and caution." ―Booklist (starred review)
"Sebba delivers a sympathetic portrait....a persuasive argument that Rosenberg's death was a tragic miscarriage of justice." ―Publishers Weekly
"Timely, superbly written and ultimately devastating, this is an American tragedy indeed. I don't think I've ever read a book that has moved me more." ―Anthony Horowitz, New York Times bestselling author of The Magpie Murders and The Sentence is Death
"Sebba cuts through the historical myths and distortions to reveal the real Ethel, a pawn in the Cold War, who simply longed to be a loving mother and a singer. It is a wrenching story of the corruption of justice by influence, ambition, and fear―how powerless we are when no one wants to hear the truth." ―Nancy Thorndike Greenspan, author of Atomic Spy: The Dark Lives of Klaus Fuchs
This information about Ethel Rosenberg was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Anne Sebba is a prize-winning biographer, lecturer, and former Reuters foreign correspondent who has written several books, including That Woman and Les Parisiennes. A former chair of Britain's Society of Authors and now on the Council, Anne is also a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Historical Research. She lives in London.
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