THE
EDUCATION OF A
RELUCTANT RADICAL
Reconstruction, Book 5
by Carl
Marzani
“The Education of a Reluctant
Radical is beautifully written, informing us beyond the events it relates,
thus touching us all. It is a walloping wonder of a memoir.”
— JOHN A. WILLIAMS
“At a time when socialists all over
the world awaken each day to a welter of pain, confusion, and regret, Carl
Marzani is sitting down to remind us that socialism remains a powerful response
to organized human need.”
— VIVIAN GORNICK
“Delightful reading . . . the life
of a ‘premature anti-fascist' that spans nearly the whole of the
century.”
— STUDS TERKEL
“For Carl Marzani, a brave and
staunch dissident and now one of those rare autobiographers who is
simultaneously a first-rate biographer of his place(s) and time.”
— JANE JACOBS
“This book spans a period of forty years, from my entering jail in
March of 1949 to November of 1989, when the Berlin Wall came down. It touches
nine presidencies—all dominated by the Cold War. That long period
contained some of the most traumatic events in the history of the United
States: the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther
King, and Malcolm X, as well as the wars in Korea and Vietnam.”
Reconstruction, Book 5 is the final volume of memoirs from one who
was, according to Italo Calvino, "a unique man . . . truly in love with
the United States." Here is a remarkable first-hand account of many
formative events of our time, and contains portraits of some of its great
figures, including encounters with Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. It also
recounts the reconstruction of Carl Marzani's life following imprisonment and
divorce, with the building of a new life and family.
This volume also includes Carl Marzani's Prison
Notebooks—confiscated by the prison authorities in 1949 and retrieved
from the FBI files in the 1980s—which now take their place among the
literature of incarceration.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Part I: RECONSTRUCTION
Chapter One: Subverting Federal Prisons
Chapter Two: Becoming a Writer
Chapter Three: Books on the Barricades
Chapter Four: Death of a Racket
Chapter Five: Prometheus Paperbacks
Chapter Six: The Threat of War
Chapter Seven: Adrift
Chapter Eight: Fare Politica
Chapter Nine: Assassination and Beyond
Chapter Ten: Oh No, Not a Landlord!
Chapter Eleven: Eurocommunism
Chapter Twelve: Beating the Odds
Part II: PRISON NOTEBOOKS
Index
About the Author
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.
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