Search results for ""author joshua melville""

“American Time Bomb is a vital read for this moment. ” —Heather Ann Thompson, author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy Few stories are more central to understanding our history of racially biased incarceration and violent social activism than the life of Sam Melville. Melville was both reviled and admired as one of the most feared radicals in post–World War II history. His importance in the 1960s is widely recognized by historians and scholars as epitomizing the controversies, the promise, and the problems of the New Left. This memoir by Melville’s son opens a window into the personal life of a legend, revealing the universal and all-too-human foibles motivating those driven to make change through violence. In the current political climate, at the fiftieth anniversary of the Attica Uprising, this nation grows increasingly interested in the racially biased incarceration and violent social activism that has shaped our nation. There are few stories more central to both subjects than the life of Sam Melville, who was often called “the Mad Bomber.” American Time Bomb is a son's personal portrait based on years of investigation of Melville's story and the history he helped to create.Joshua Melville’s personal connection to the story gives a gut-wrenching multigenerational tale of childhood abandonment but also adds a compelling historical study of politics, history, and issues of social justice.

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Now presented with a son’s thirty years of research to provide new context. In June 1970, Sam Melville pleaded guilty to a series of politically motivated bombings in New York City and was sentenced to thirteen to eighteen years in jail. His imprisonment took him to Attica, where he helped lead the massive rebellion of September 9, 1971—and where, four days later, he was shot to death by state police. During nearly two years in prison, Melville wrote letters to his friends, his attorneys, his former wife, and his young son. To read them is to eavesdrop on a man's soul. Determinedly honest and deeply moving, they reveal much about Sam and evoke the suffering of prisoners in America. Collected after his death, the letters were originally published with material by Jane Alpert, who was living with Sam when both were arrested on bombing charges, and John Cohen, a close friend who visited Sam in jail. Sam's letters begin with despair but end in hope and defiance. He became a leader of the prisoners' struggle for justice and humane treatment. At Attica he fought against and was a victim of the state's brutality. Those who knew Sam found him a man of extraordinary courage and determination, who rather than accede or submit to injustice and racism chose to fight against them.

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