Book Review: Neville, J. F. (2004). Twentieth-Century Cause Cèlébre: Sacco, Vanzetti, and the Press, 1920-1927. Westport, CT and London: Praeger. Pp. 189

• Published date: 01 December 2007
• DOI: 10.1177/1057567707310975
• Author: Mary Anne Trasciatti
• Date: 01 December 2007
• Subject Matter: Articles

Professor Payan concludes with an analysis of the lessons learned about organizational behavior.

Each agency had its own culture and dynamics, and bureaucratic politics and organizational culture

(used as analytical paradigms) were helpful in more fully explaining bureaucratic growth. Interagency

relationships develop in response to how an agency sees itself and its mission. Bureaucratic growth

came about not from constant agency pressure but from “windows of opportunity” (e.g., during a

legislative session or when one agency is subsumed within another agency). Perhaps most important,

the author demonstrates how organizational behavior and bureaucratic politics (as models) may

be used together to assist in developing a more fully fleshed out explanation of organizations, their

behaviors and cultures.

Professor Payan’s work is extensively researched and footnoted. The volume contains an index,

extensive bibliography, and explanation of abbreviations. His work is thoughtful, insightful, and

focused. He brings a wealth of personal experience to the book as well. Cops, Soldiers, and Diplomats

should be read by those interested in criminal justice, political science, public administrations, and

U.S.–Mexico relations. It is a solid contribution to the literature.

John S. Robey

University of Texas–Brownsville

Neville, J. F. (2004). Twentieth-Century Cause Cèlébre: Sacco, Vanzetti, and the Press,

1920-1927. Westport, CT and London: Praeger. Pp. 189.

DOI: 10.1177/1057567707310975

How is it that the trial of two obscure Italian immigrant anarchists arrested outside Boston in 1920

for robbery and murder garnered worldwide attention when most other trials receive little if any

newspaper coverage in the United States, or elsewhere around the world? The answer, according

to John F. Neville, is myth and propaganda. In Twentieth-Century Cause Cèlébre: Sacco, Vanzetti,

and the Press, 1920-1927 Neville argues that advocates for Sacco and Vanzetti used the myth of a

government conspiracy to persecute radicals as the basis for a propaganda campaign that transformed

the case from a relatively unimportant constellation of events in Massachusetts into “one of America’s

most celebrated political cases of the twentieth century” (p. ix). To explain the potency of this myth,

Neville posits that Americans’ appetite for conspiracy was whetted by the Dreyfus case. The press,

fascinated with Zola’s efforts to obtain a new trial for Dreyfus, fed readers exotic fare “involving

high-level conspiracy,cover-up, and betrayal” (p. xii). When the Sacco and Vanzetti case broke, Americans

were all too eager to believe that their own government could victimize someone.

In focusing his analysis on propaganda, the press, and public opinion, Neville, whose previous

book is a study of press coverage of the trial of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, aims to fill a significant

gap in the voluminous literature on the Sacco and Vanzetti case. Unfortunately,he fails in this attempt,

primarily because he subordinates important facts about the case and the defense campaign to his

larger goal of proving a communist conspiracy to discredit the United States and foment revolution

around the world.

Neville uses the first three chapters of the book to establish context. He explains the anarchist

background of the case, briefly discusses the Red Scare, and provides information about the crimes

for which Sacco and Vanzetti were arrested, the trial, and the appeals process. Several things are

problematic about this section. Neville misidentifies the late Paul Avrich, a preeminent scholar of

anarchism and a major source for any study of the Sacco and Vanzetti case, as Steven Avrich. Such

sloppiness is inexcusable. He also errs in the spelling of a number of Italian-language newspapers

so that, for example, L’Agitazione is L’Agitation and Il Proletario is Il Protestario.

370 International Criminal Justice Review