Aaron J. Leonard is an American author with a particular focus on the history of radicalism and state suppression.

Biography

Leonard was born in

Herkimer, New York Herkimer is a town in Herkimer County, New York, United States, southeast of Utica. It is named after Nicholas Herkimer. The population was 10,175 at the 2010 census. The town contains a village also called Herkimer. Herkimer County Community ...

. He has a BA in Social Sciences and History. He graduated,

magna cum laude Latin honors are a system of Latin phrases used in some colleges and universities to indicate the level of distinction with which an academic degree has been earned. The system is primarily used in the United States. It is also used in some So ...

, from

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, the ...

in 2012. He lives in

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

Works

He is the author of ''Heavy Radicals: The FBI’s Secret War on America’s Maoists'' (Zer0 Books 2015, ) and ''A Threat of the First Magnitude—FBI Counterintelligence & Infiltration: From the Communist Party to the Revolutionary Union''.(

Repeater Books Repeater Books is a publishing imprint based in London, founded in 2014 by Tariq Goddard and Mark Fisher, formerly the founders of radical publishers Zero Books, along with Etan Ilfeld, Tamar Shlaim, Alex Niven and Matteo Mandarini. Formation I ...

, 2018, ). In 2020 he published ''

The Folk Singers and the Bureau The Folk Singers and the Bureau: The FBI, the Folk Artists and the Suppression of the Communist Party, USA-1939-1956 is a book written by Aaron Leonard. Background The book focuses on musicians such as Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Lee Hays, a ...

'' (Repeater Books). Joe Pagetta, writing in ''America'' magazine said, "Aaron J. Leonard’s new book, The Folk Singers and the Bureau, draws from almost 10,000 pages of F.B.I. files on an array of folk artists. It aims to illustrate the considerable impact that the U.S. government’s campaign against Communism had on folk artists in the 1940s and early ’50s." Daniel Rosenberg, in ''American Communist History'' wrote: "Aaron J. Leonard has contributed a solid piece of research to the history of FBI repression of the Communist Party USA by tracing the surveillance, investigation, and harassment of folk singers, many of whom belonged or were sympathetic to the Party." In February 2023, his book'' Whole World in an Uproar: Music, Rebellion & Repression - 1955-1972'' was published.(

, 2023, ). It focuses on folk and pop musicians that were subjects of FBI surveillance and monitoring since the 1950s. Such artists included Pete Seeger, Phil Ochs and Dave Van Ronk due to their affiliations with organized groups or specific political activism such as making anti-war statements and contributing to "civil unrest". In May 2024 he will publish ''Meltdown Expected: Crisis, Disorder & Upheaval at the end of the 1970s'' (Rutgers Univ. Press), the story of the power shifts from late 1978 through 1979 leading to the final phase of the cold war.

References

External links

Aaron J Leonard official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Leonard, Aaron Living people Year of birth missing (living people) 20th-century American historians 21st-century American historians New York University alumni Historians of communism