ETHEL ROSENBERG, An American Tragedy
by ANNE SEBBA
She wanted to be a singer and an actor. Teachers called her out of class to sing the national anthem at assemblies, and she was often hired to sing at public events where her delivery of a song would move people to tears. Her family was poorly educated if at all, but she was intelligent and grabbed every opportunity to add to her education and talents.
She cared about people who were needy, or treated unfairly. And Ethel Greenglass relinquished a high paying job that she enjoyed to marry her sweetheart, Julius Rosenberg. It was a tough situation financially because he made less money than she. But in those days that’s how it was done. She adored her husband and was completely devoted to their two sons.
Most American students have a cursory knowledge of the story of Julius and Ethel Rosenburg, who were accused along with her brother David and his wife Ruth, and Morton Sobell on suspicion of espionage, mainly providing American military secrets to Soviet agents.
Enter into the story people like Roy Cohn, Joseph McCarthy, Irving Kaufman, and Irving Saypol to name just a few who were champing at the bit to make powerful names for themselves. Sure there was a lack of evidence against Ethel, and lies that her brother and sister-in-law were coerced to swear to under oath to save their own necks, and throw in the building Red Scare and the game was on.
Through it all Ethel worried about her children, their education, emotional development, security and happiness. Writing letters to her boys as well as friends, teachers, and counselors in their lives to see that they were well cared for and thriving even under the cloud of their parents in prison and on death row.
The pressure stayed on as the prosecution, aware there was no evidence against her, Ethel, believed the threat of executing a mother with two small children would provide the leverage to extract a confession from Julius. After her particularly gruesome execution it was admitted that she was collateral damage of McCarthyism, and had indeed called their bluff.
Anne Sebba, an accomplished biographer, magnificently takes the reader back in time to see, hear, and feel the world of Ethel Greenglass Rosenberg.

I’ve long been curious about the Rosenbergs circumstances so jumped at the chance to read this book. It’s really interesting and very well written, if it’s a subject that intrigues you.

Within the entire Rosenberg affair, Ethel remains somewhat of a mystery - a Mona Lisa smile, if you will. The image created is that she is the mastermind behind the espionage. The reality, however, as laid out in this story and all the documentation it cites, is exactly the opposite.

Ethel had morals and beliefs, some of which appear to be conflicting when viewed through the lens of modern day society. But to think of the world in the late 40s and 50s, a different story emerges.

This book isn’t so much about stealing secrets as it is a psychological study of a woman caught in one of the greatest crimes of the 20th century.

#netgalley #ethelrosenberg

This is an incredibly informative book. It flows nicely and isn't boring. It is well researched and had me goigling a lot of things mentioned in the book. Makes a real case for Ethel.

I’ll admit my knowledge of the Rosenberg’s could probably be summarized as: Couple convicted on passing military secrets to the Soviet Union who were executed by electrocution.

Anne Sebba’s Ethel Rosenberg did much to humanize Ethel in particular. She was able to humanize this greatly reviled figure of Cold War intrigue by showing the reader Ethel Rosenberg as a person who had dreams of being a singer, who fell into Communism and in love with Julius Rosenberg and desperately wanted to be the best wife and mother possible. But Ethel Rosenberg was far from naïve. She was fiercely loyal and highly intelligent.

Sebba explains that we have to look the Rosenberg’s through the political hysteria of the McCarthy Hearings and general atmosphere of Communist paranoia where any little association with a Communist could get one branded. The Rosenberg’s are certainly naive and idealistic and Julius certainly passed on secrets to the Soviets, but Ethel was removed from any grand communist plot if one existed at all. Still Ethel was used as a pawn by law enforcement officials desperate to get Julius-the hardcore communist traitor.

But she wouldn’t perhaps couldn’t save herself.

Thus making herself for Sebba a tragically heroic figure.

3 1/2 stars - Let me start off by saying, I knew nothing about the Rosenbergs prior to reading this book. I learned a lot about them. The book was drawn out with multiple quotes and numerous names that made it difficult to hold my attention at times. I loved reading the parts specifically about Julius and Ethel. I am horrified at how the system failed them as their trial appeared flawed from the beginning as was the evidence against Ethel. I am not saying they were completely innocent, but did their crime justify the death penalty. Good for her to not betray anyone, which she could have easily done or even lied about in order to escape the death penalty. That above all shows her loyalty and true character. I would love to see a good historical fiction written about the Rosenbergs, specifically about them as I feel so much could be done with that. Glad I read it as I said, I learned a lot and it was very interesting.

This book illuminates the social, cultural and political factors that contributed to the conviction and execution of Ethel Rosenberg. Although at times the thoroughness of this book in presenting details overwhelmed or bored me, the story always picked up pace and renewed my interest. This book provided context for both Ethel's actions and inactions and led to increased empathy for her. The book also provides information about the heart breaking effects of the Rosenberg's execution in their young sons. Thank you Net Galley for the ARC of this book.

The legacy of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg will forever be as that of traitors to America. It is what I learned in school, what my parents reinforced at home, and what every history book ever had to say. The older I got, and the more educated I became, particularly about American history, and what passes for “justice” in our culture, the more I learned it was my responsibility to challenge the teachings of my youth. As such, I was very interested to read this account of the Rosenbergs, which focuses primarily on Ethel. Ethel Rosenberg was as much a victim of her time as she was of the justice system. A wife and mother, fiercely loyal and devoted to her husband, Ethel “stands by her man” and refuses to betray him even to save herself. This book provides a lot of information overlooked by history and those tasked with telling it. If you don’t finish this book believing in Ethel’s innocence, I expect you will at minimum be left with doubt and the need to find more answers. Ethel’s story could belong to any one of us, or our mothers, or our daughters. It is important to understand how easily our rights can be disregarded when fear is stronger than fact. I highly recommend this book. It was excellent, in the most tragic of ways.

Many thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for providing me the opportunity to read and review this book.

I didn’t know much about Ethel Rosenberg other than she was executed. This book provided an interesting introduction. Born into a Jewish family living in abject poverty in New York City, it’s not surprising she would espouse communism. Why so many Jews supported Soviet communism is baffling, since the Soviets were anti-Semitic, but that’s another story.
Her husband Julius believed the Soviets, as wartime allies, should benefit from US intelligence and recruited spies. He got Ethel’s brother, who worked as Los Alamos, to steal secrets. Ethel must have known what her husband was doing. However, approving of spousal wrongdoing wasn’t a crime. The trial was a travesty of justice. The prosecution and judge were all Jews, so anti-Semitism can’t be blamed. Ethel’s conviction rested on her useless brother’s perjury that the prosecution encouraged. The government wanted to forced the Rosenbergs to confess and reveal names. The death penalty was to scare them into doing so. They refused. Would admitting guilt have saved them?
The author has her biases, denigrating people who didn’t have anything to do with the Rosenberg story, like Reagan and Trump. To me, that makes her storytelling a bit suspect.

This is an extraordinarily interesting book. The author has spent a good number of years digging for information and documents, conducting interviews, and tracking down people who actually knew the Rosenbergs. Some of these conversations required trips across the US. What emerges is a very detailed and sensitive portrait of Ethel Rosenberg without any apparent bias in any direction. Sebba draws a portrait of the lives of immigrants who lived in the Lower East Side of New York City in very, very poor conditions during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries . In addition to setting that scene, she gives the reader a vivid and well-researched experience of what it was like to grow up as Ethel Rosenberg in particular, how she saw herself and worked to make something meaningful of her life. Rosenberg often had to sacrifice her own fulfillment to take care of her birth family, and it was done without any recognition or appreciation from her bitter mother. Her life became even more complex after she married Julius Rosenberg and had two sons. She still was expected to look after her parents and siblings plus be the wife and mother she dearly wanted to be. But here again, her talents took a back seat as money became scarce and time for herself even scarcer.
The Rosenbergs' open involvement in Communism is described in the larger context of poor immigrants from eastern Europe who saw Communism as a way out of poverty and as a counter-action to Nazism especially after World War II. Membership in "the party" was not considered by people like the Rosenbergs to be particularly "anti-American" until the McCarthy movement became such a major force. Julius was easily recruited as a Soviet agent and he appears to have told himself that since the Soviets were American allies who helped to defeat the Nazis in WWII, this was not really traitorous. It's hard to believe Julius could be so gullible, but, apparently, he was. A factual case was never made that Ethel was actively involved in espionage. Sebba was able to get the transcripts from grand jury hearings involving Julius as well as Ethel's brother David; these records had been sealed until 2015 and have not figured in previous books about the Rosenbergs. They tell us what prosecutors actually knew to be true versus what they presented in court.
Perhaps the most gripping part of Sebba's exegesis of Ethel's life is this detailed laying out of prosecutors' investigation of Julius and of her brother as possible spies. The level of prosecutorial misconduct and the blatant tipping of the case toward the prosecution by the judge is jaw-dropping. The lead prosecutor was an ambitious and amoral man assisted by...wait for it...Roy Cohn. There is a real sense of nightmare and almost unreality as the story moves inexorably forward, and witnesses are blackmailed into perjuring themselves so guilty verdicts would be rendered in this case. What this ultimately led to for the Rosenbergs is known by the reader before s/he opens the book. And yet, the events feel unbelievable. The experience of the Rosenberg boys during all of this is described in detail and is heartbreaking.
This is an important book with much relevance in our time. Again, I did not perceive any bias on the part of the author either in favor of or against either of the Rosenbergs. Anne Sebba tells the story in a masterful way and provides careful reference notes for all facts.

Ethel Rosenberg: An American Tragedy by Anne Sebba is an excellent nonfiction that delves into the short, but fascinating life, and ultimately tragic death, of the wife to Julius Rosenberg. Both were sentenced to death by electrocution in 1953 for suspected leaking of US information to the Soviet Union during the Cold War and the age of McCarthyism.

What the author successfully accomplishes with this book is trying to shed light on this often misunderstood woman on why she was the way she was, what she knew and what she might not have, and how she ended up on Death Row.

It was fascinating to find out more about her childhood, her thoughts, emotions, attitudes, and personal struggles as a child, young adult, and adult. Unfortunately, Ethel was not appreciated and dismissed by her own mother due to the fact that she was a girl. It seemed that in an era where women were still considered the “lesser” of the genders, she was caged within certain expectations and perimeters that ultimately led to the path that she found herself upon. It was interesting to see her reasoning and passion for the Communist party and for her husband. She seemed socially awkward and seemed to never “fit in” within the “normal social circles” present. Her difficulty with relationships and maternal instincts were affected by the lack of a loving and accepting childhood. These quirks and personality traits helped add to the stigmas that ultimately led to her demise.

It was so sad to see a woman, whom I feel, did not know the full depth of her husband’s clandestine activity, ultimately be part of the scapegoat that was used by the government, her own family, and certain judicial and political figures at that time. The circumstantial evidence and the obvious selective facts and gossip that were used as part of the case against her was devastating to read. Was she perfect? Nope. But I ultimately feel that she was not guilty of espionage. I may be wrong, but after following the narrative and the case for and against her within this book and my research, I feel that she was unjustly accused and punished.

This book is an impressive collection of information and it was truly riveting.

5/5 stars

Thank you NetGalley and St Martin’s Press for this arc and in return I am submitting my unbiased and voluntary review and opinion.

I am posting this review to my GR and Bookbub accounts immediately and will post it to my Amazon, Instagram, and B&N accounts upon publication on 6/8/21.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the Kindle ARC of Ethel Rosenberg. I've long been intrigued by the story of the Rosenbergs and haven't read many books about them. As the title indicates, this non-fiction story of Ethel Rosenberg, the wife of Julius Rosenberg, and the events in Ethel's life that lead to her and her husband's executions in 1953. When I was younger, with a young daughter of my own, I wondered what exactly could lead to a mother of two children to be executed for espionage. This book dives deeply into Ethel's life and gives the reader information to decide for himself or herself if Ethel was guilty of the crimes of which she was accused. Betrayal and misinformation may have lead to the death of that mother of two children. A factual, in-depth study of a dark period in U.S. history.