Founded | 1954 |
---|---|
Founders | Carl Marzani Angus Cameron (publisher) |
Country of origin | United States |
Headquarters location | New York City, New York, USA |
Publication types | Books |
Marzani & Munsell (1955-1967) was an American book publisher of the mid-20th Century, based in Manhattan, which published liberal and leftist books, starting with False Witness by Harvey Matusow. [1]
After release from prison in 1951, Carl Marzani joined Cameron Associates and partnered with Angus Cameron to run Liberty Book Club. Marzani & Munsell formed as a book club (in an unclear relationship with Alexander Ector Orr Munsell, "that unusual combination of a practicing Christian and a practicing Marxist" per Carl Marzani, [2] and son and heir of Albert Henry Munsell) and also operated what had become the Library-Prometheus Book Club. Together, the two book clubs, with some 8,000 members, published and distributed many books following their progressive ideology. [3]
In a later interview, Marzani described his publishing house:
We also had a very distinguished list – we had the first book on the Rosenbergs, the first book on FBI informers, a the first book on black armed self-defense, b and so on. We also had an outlet for the blacklisted writers – we published novels and other writings by Ring Lardner Jr., c Alvah Bessie, Abe Polonsky, Albert Maltz. We also did an enormous amount of pamphlets, four or five every year – on the Bay of Pigs, on Vietnam, the Warren Report – there wasn't a major issue we didn't put out something on. We were a major influence among two or three others – the National Guardian, Monthly Review – during the years I call the American resistance to McCarthyism. [4]
In 1959 when Cameron left for at job at Knopf, Marzani became president. [1] Marzani and Munsell publishing house "was destroyed in a mysterious fire" in 1966, ending the run of books, pamphlets, broadsheets and reprints. [1] [3] Marzani later described the loss: "It destroyed our stock, our lists, everything, and we had no insurance." [4]
According to allegations made in 1994 by Oleg Kalugin, a retired KGB officer, Marzani was a contact for the Soviet secret police agency, the KGB, while running Marzani & Munsell, and the KGB subsidized his publishing house in the 1960s. [5] Allegedly, the amounts were $15,000 in 1960, then a two-year grant in 1961 of $55,000. [3]
Tamiment Library at New York University houses papers of Marzani & Munsell, whose principle correspondents include: Angus Cameron (publisher), Herbert Aptheker, Calvin Benham Baldwin (aka "C.B. Baldwin" and "Beanie Baldwin"), Cedric Belfrage, Alvah Bessie, Herbert Biberman, Harry Bridges, E. Berry Burgum, W.E.B. Du Bois, Barrows Dunham, Howard Fast, Royal France, Stefan Heym, Albert E. Kahn, Ring Lardner Jr., Doris Lessing, Walter Lowenfels, Albert Maltz, A.J. Muste, Carey McWilliams (journalist), Truman J. Nelson, Victor Perlo, Edwin B. Smith, Edgar Snow, Joseph R. Starobin, Anna Louise Strong, Harry F. Ward, and Ella Winter. [1]
David Merrick was an American theatrical producer who won a number of Tony Awards.
This section of the timeline of United States history concerns events from 1950 to 1969.
Herbert Aptheker was an American Marxist historian and political activist. He wrote more than 50 books, mostly in the fields of African-American history and general U.S. history, most notably, American Negro Slave Revolts (1943), a classic in the field. He also compiled the 7-volume Documentary History of the Negro People (1951–1994). In addition, he compiled a wide variety of primary documents supporting study of African-American history. He was the literary executor for W. E. B. Du Bois.
Robert Franklin Williams was an American civil rights leader and author best known for serving as president of the Monroe, North Carolina chapter of the NAACP in the 1950s and into 1961. He succeeded in integrating the local public library and swimming pool in Monroe. At a time of high racial tension and official abuses, Williams promoted armed Black self-defense in the United States. In addition, he helped gain support for gubernatorial pardons in 1959 for two young African-American boys who had received lengthy reformatory sentences in what was known as the Kissing Case of 1958.
Robert Clifton Weaver was an American economist, academic, and political administrator who served as the first United States secretary of housing and urban development (HUD) from 1966 to 1968, when the department was newly established by President Lyndon B. Johnson. Weaver was the first African American to be appointed to a US cabinet-level position.
John Drew Barrymore was an American film actor and member of the Barrymore family of actors, which included his father, John Barrymore, and his father's siblings, Lionel and Ethel. He was the father of four children, including actor John Blyth Barrymore and actress Drew Barrymore. Diana Barrymore was his half-sister from his father's second marriage.
USS Great Sitkin (AE-17) was a Mount Hood class ammunition ship, which served in the United States Navy from 1945 to 1973. USS Great Sitkin supported USN operations in several major theatres, including the Mediterranean, the Atlantic, Cuban Missile Blockade, Guantanamo Bay, and the Vietnam War. In the tradition of naming ammunition ships after volcanos, AE-17 was named after the Great Sitkin Volcano in Alaska.
The 87th United States Congress was a meeting of the legislative branch of the United States federal government, composed of the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives. It met in Washington, D.C. from January 3, 1961, to January 3, 1963, during the final weeks of Dwight D. Eisenhower's presidency and the first two years of John Kennedy's presidency. The apportionment of seats in the House of Representatives was based on the 1950 United States census, along with two seats temporarily added in 1959.
Victor Perlo was an American Marxist economist, government functionary, and a longtime member of the governing National Committee of the Communist Party USA.
Carl Aldo Marzani was an Italian-born American political activist with a series of careers as a volunteer soldier in the Spanish Civil War, organizer for the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), United States intelligence official, documentary filmmaker with an Academy Award nomination, author, and publisher. During World War II he served in the federal intelligence agency, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), and later the U.S. Department of State. He picked the targets for the Doolittle raid on Tokyo, which took place on April 18, 1942. Marzani served nearly three years in prison for having concealed his former CPUSA membership when joining the US war effort in 1942.
The Vanguard Press was a United States publishing house established with a $100,000 grant from the left-wing American Fund for Public Service, better known as the Garland Fund. Throughout the 1920s, Vanguard Press issued an array of books on radical topics, including studies of the Soviet Union, socialist theory, and politically oriented fiction by a range of writers. The press ultimately received a total of $155,000 from the Garland Fund, which separated itself and turned the press over to its publisher, James Henle. Henle became sole owner in February 1932.
Charlotte Inez Pomerantz was an American children's writer and journalist.
Donald Angus Cameron, publicly known by his middle name, was an American book editor and publisher. Cameron scored his first success handling The Joy of Cooking by Irma Rombauer for Indianapolis publisher Bobbs-Merrill Company in 1936. He moved to Little, Brown and Company in 1938.
Truman J. Nelson was an American writer of historical novels and essays, a civil rights activist, and a curator. His literary works mainly dealt with subjects such as revolution and the "revolutionary morality" as well as anti-racism and the civil rights struggle in the United States.
Negroes with Guns is a 1962 book by civil rights activist Robert F. Williams. Timothy B. Tyson said, Negroes with Guns was "the single most important intellectual influence on Huey P. Newton, the founder of the Black Panther Party". The book is used in college courses and is discussed in debates.
Allan Robert Rosenberg was a 20th-century American labor lawyer and civil servant, accused as a Soviet spy by Elizabeth Bentley and listed under Party name "Roy, code names "Roza" in the VENONA Papers and code name "Sid" in the Vasilliev Papers; he also defended Dr. Benjamin Spock.
This bibliography of John F. Kennedy is a list of published works about John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States.
The 1963 Philadelphia's municipal election, held on November 5, involved contests for mayor, all seventeen city council seats, and several other executive and judicial offices. The Democrats lost vote share citywide and the Republicans gained one seat in City Council, but the Democratic acting mayor, James Tate, was elected to a full term and his party maintained their hold on the city government. The election was the first decline in the Democrats' share of the vote since they took control of the city government in the 1951 elections, and showed the growing tension between the reformers and ward bosses within their party.
Louis Everett Burnham was an African-American activist and journalist. From his college days, and continuing through adulthood, he was involved in activities emphasizing racial equality, through various left-wing organizations, campaigns and publications in both the northern and southern United States, particularly in New York City and Birmingham, Alabama.
Public Affairs Press was a book publisher in Washington, D.C., owned and often edited by Morris Bartel Schnapper (1912–1999).
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: others (link)