The Education of Henry Adams

Boston: Houghton Mifflin, N.d. [ca 1940s]. Reprint. Octavo, red cloth; 517pp. Very Good. An undistinguished reprint, except that this copy bears a taped-in accession slip from the Danbury [CT] Federal Correctional Institution: "This item has been approved for quarters for the following inmate only [completed in type]: Name: Marzani. No. 7333-Ct. Date: January 15, 1950." Signed in ink by William Berg, Supervisor of Education. Carl Marzani (1912-1994), a CPUSA organizer and veteran of the Spanish Civil War, became the central figure in a noted 1947 espionage trial when it was discovered that he had concealed his Communist Party membership during a three-year period of employment with the OSS (precursor to the modern CIA) during the Second World War. Marzani was convicted under the Espionage Act and served nearly three years in Danbury Prison. His radical activities did not diminish while he was behind bars; in fact in 1950 he was sentenced to seven months in solitary confinement after being caught attempting to smuggle out the manuscript for his critique of America's anti-Soviet posture during the Cold War, later published as We Can Be Friends. After his release, Marzani went on to become a leading radical publisher, co-founding the radical publishing house Cameron Associates (later Marzani & Munsell) as well as The Liberty Book Club. A remarkable Cold-War survival, the only example of its kind we have encountered.