On August 17, 1940, Oklahoma City police conducted a raid on a bookstore affiliated with the state Communist Party, seizing books and other materials and arresting 20 people, customers and proprietors, many of whom were to stand trial under the state's criminal syndicalism laws. In this work, Wiegand (emerita, law, Marquette U.) and Wiegand (library and information studies, Florida State U.) describe the trials and their aftermath, in which the conviction of the defendants unleashed a storm of protest from labor unions, churches, publishers, academics, librarians, the American Civil Liberties Union, and even Eleanor Roosevelt, ultimately leading to the defendants' verdicts being overturned on appeal. Annotation ©2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)