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. Had the Rosenbergs in fact passed atomic secrets on to the Russians, secrets so vital that they enabled the Soviet Union to build its own atomic bomb? Or were they set up by a government eager for scapegoats in an era of conspiracy politics? American Jews and the American Left, as public opinion, were deeply divided by the case, which came to stand in many minds for the paranoia of the Cold War. Forty years later, many of the issues that aroused fierce partisanship are still with us. Feminism, civil rights, the death penalty, due process, homosexuality--all of these issues were focused in and around the Rosenberg case and the McCarthy era, with its blacklisting of many artists, writers, filmmakers and intellectual. Secret Agents is a timely and incisive collection of essays.
The contributors draw salient connections between that" time and this" time, demonstrating that an awareness of history in high culture and popular culture, literature, politics and the arts has never been more important - or more contested - than it is now.