Carlo Tresca Portrait of a Rebel

This biography reveals the life of one of the American left's most controversial and charismatic figures in the early twentieth century: anarchist, activist, and revolutionary Carlo Tresca. Emigrating to America at age twenty-five from Italy, Tresca became a leader in the fight for workers' rights, alongside activists like Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and Emma Goldman. Tresca played many roles for his cause: newspaper editor, labor agitator and organizer, civil libertarian, anti-fascist, and an indomitable foe of Stalinism. He continued to fight for the rights of the oppressed until gunned down by Mafioso Carmine Galante, a crime which would never be prosecuted. This engaging book not only relates Tresca's adventure-filled story, but brings to life the volatile world of radical politics in early twentieth century America.

Nunzio Pernicone is Associate Professor of History, Drexel University. He is the author of Italian Anarchism, 1864-1892 and editor of The Autobiography of Carlo Tresca. He lives in Newtown, Pennsylvania.