Emma Goldman A Documentary History of the American Years, Volume 1

Price just reduced (by $12+)!! 650 pages of original texts—letters, speeches, newspaper articles by, about, and to anarchism's leading lady, all anthologized for the first time, and many never before translated into English. All painstakingly annotated, introduced, and contextualized in a truly heroic volume. This first volume tracks the young Emma's introduction into the anarchist movement, features her earliest known writings in the German anarchist press, and charts her gradual emergence from the radical immigrant circles of New York City's Lower East Side into a political and intellectual culture of both national and international importance. Goldman's remarkable public ascendance is framed within a volatile period of political violence: within the first few pages, Henry Clay Frick, the anti-union industrialist is shot by Alexander Berkman, Goldman's lover. The book ends with the assassination of President William McKinley, an act in which Goldman was falsely implicated. Themes that came to dominate her life—anarchism and its possibilities, free speech, education, the transformative power and social significance of literature, the position of labor within the capitalist economic system, the vital importance of women's freedom, the dynamics of personal relationships, and strategies for social revolution—are among the many introduced here. A truly staggering work well worth the price.