The Tree of Liberty: A Documentary History of Rebellion and Political Crime in America: A Legal, Historical, Social, and Psychological Inquiry into Rebellions and Political Crimes

If, as Thomas Jefferson noted, "a little rebellion now and then is a good thing," The Tree of Liberty must be superb. This comprehensive collection of documents related to "rebellion and political crime in America" begins with numerous documents from the colonial period and proceeds right up to present-day battles over free speech in cyberspace. Along with source documents such as the Mayflower Compact and Thomas Paine's Common Sense, The Tree of Liberty also publishes a staggering array of letters and other personal accounts, newspaper stories, and court decisions related to dissent, disobedience, and rebellion. The editors deserve credit not only for providing many standard pieces of source material but for also delving deeply and dredging up material related to many events that, while highly controversial when they happened, are not well remembered today, such as the court decisions pertaining to the imprisonment of Eugene V. Debs for his part in an 1894 railroad strike, and the jailhouse letters and the final court statement of Bartolomeo Vanzetti, who was hanged in 1927, along with fellow Italian-born anarchist Nicola Sacco, for a crime that evidence has always suggested they did not commit. This is an often surprising collection of material related to those who, for better or worse, marched to a different drum. --Robert McNamara