CultureWork: A Book Series from the Center for Literacy and Cultural Studies at Harvard Secret Agents

The 1950's trial of the Rosenburgs on charges of 'atomic spying' came to stand in many minds for the paranoia of the Cold War. Many of the issues are still with us and the contributors draw salient connections between that time and this. When the American Bar Association recreated the trial of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg on the fortieth anniversary of their execution, the jury acquitted the "mock Rosenbergs," finding that in today's courts they would not have been convicted of espionage. The 1950s trial of the Rosenbergs on charges of "Atomic Spying" and "stealing the secrets of the Atomic bomb" was a major event of Cold War America, galvanizing public opinion on all sides of the question. Secret Agents presents essays by lawyers, cultural critics, social historians and historians of science, as well as a reconsideration of the Rosenbergs by their younger son, Robert Meeropol. Secret Agents gives new resonance to a history we have for too long been willing to forget.