The children of activists struggle with their parents' choices

One spring morning in 1989, Rob Meeropol woke up with a political vision bright in his mind. Since the mid-1970s he’d been leading an effort to reopen the case of his parents, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were executed in 1953 for conspiring to steal atomic secrets. The existential crisis this caused him was acute: Mired in the past, he was too busy to spend time with his own wife and children. To make matters worse, he also worked, unhappily, as an estate attorney "in the belly of American business," as he puts it. He wanted to be politically active but he wasn’t sure how. He wanted to be a son of the Rosenbergs, but in his own way.

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