All the Right Enemies: The Life and Murder of Carlo Tresca

Carlo Tresca, flamboyant American anarchist leader, was a working-class hero at the time of his 1943 assassination in New York by contract killer Carmine Galante. Today, he is nearly forgotten, as is the unresolved mystery of who ordered his murderMussolini, fascists in the U.S., the Comintern or the Mafia. This first biography of Tresca is levelheaded and exhaustively researched. Gallagher (Hannah's Daughters) dutifully covers Tresca's conversion from socialism to anarchism, his long romance with communist organizer Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, his numerous love affairs and skirmishes with conspirators and agents of every stripe. Sacco and Vanzetti, John Reed, Emma Goldman and John Dos Passos figure in the narrative. The second half of the book, a reappraisal of the Tresca murder case, sheds light on the U.S. government's wartime collaboration with the mob and its shadowy links to the narcotics trade. Photos not seen by PW. (June)