". . . . Catherine Fosl's Subversive Southerner is the first full-length
biography of Anne Braden, a ubiquitous yet elusive white activist who
rallied the fractured remnants of the Old Left coalition to the
battlefronts of civil rights in the 1950s and 60s. . . . Laying out the
inescapable interconnections of civil rights and civil liberties is Fosl's
most impressive achievement. . . .  It is thrilling when people like
Braden, who confound their time and place and then wait for the zeitgeist
to catch up, live long enough to experience their vindication and locate
their coordinates on the arc of history, bending toward justice." 

-- Pulitzer Prize winner Dianne McWhorter, New York Times Book Review, January 19, 2003

"In Subversive Southerner, Catherine Fosl has crafted a compelling account
of several critical and formative phases in the life of a true living
legend.  My assessment of the book is simple: in summary, the subject is
larger than life and the author is both an outstanding academic historian
and an accomplished writer.  This book should be read and read widely. . .
.The saga is a complex, captivating, and copiously documented history,
based on hours of interviews with Braden herself and a deep understanding
of the larger political and social context of the McCarthy and Civil Rights
eras. . . .no one should ignore this outstanding book." 

--J. Blaine Hudson, The Courier-Journal (Louisville), December 1, 2002.

". . . .Disentangling the strands of Cold War anti-communist paranoia from
an iron-bound white southern determination to hold onto a segregated way of
life, biographer Catherine Fosl lays out the searing costs, public and
private, to three generations of Anne Braden's family, of the 1954 sedition
case that drew attention around the country. But this is only the beginning
of a carefully explored life." 

-- Edith Alston in The Anniston Star (1 December 2002), Anniston, Alabama and directly here
(Anne Braden grew up in Anniston, Alabama, and the Star was the first newspaper she worked for.)

The Courier-Journal book editor Keith Runyon listed Subversive Southerner among the top 10 books of 2002.
See The Courier-Journal(Louisville), December 29, 2002.

". . . . Fosl conveys the bravery and uncompromising convictions that made
Anne Braden an important figure in the 20th-century labor and Civil Rights
movements."   

--Amy Strong, Library Journal, November 15, 2002.

"Anne and Carl Braden were two of the most active and determined white anti-racist crusaders of the 1950s and beyond. Catherine Fosl's Subversive Southerner traces the life story of Anne Braden, the archetypal 'subersive Southerner,' from her upbrining in Kentucky to her years in the desegregation struggle to her activism in the 1980s as a supporter of Jesse Jackson's Presidential campaigns. The Braden couple entered the national spotlight in 1954 because of an incident now known as the Wade Case.  The Bradens purchased a house in a segregated area of Louisville for an African American family named Wade.  Local racists targeted the house and burned a cross in the font yard. Finally, the Wade home was destroyed in a bomb blast.  The criminals were never brought to trial; instead, the Bradens and several other anti-racist activists found themselves accused of conspiring in a Communist plot against the state.  Carl Braden received a fifteen-year prison sentence for 'sedition,' which the Supreme Court overturned within months.  'The unique thing about the Cold War in the South was that [fighting it] was inextricably tied to the battle against white supremacy,' Anne Braden says. 'That was the reason for all the hysteria against us in Louisville.  It was anti-red and anti-black hysteria wrapped up and thrown at us.' Subversive Southerner is an excellent and inspiring read." --Darryl Lorenzo Wellington in The Progressive (March 2003): 44, www.progressive.org

Martha Allen in Voices for Media Democracy with the Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press.