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Word count: 3653. ... Read more

Book Description
This is actually pretty good. Through the use of a whole range of original documents - speeches, letters, contemporary newspaper columns and cartoons, you get here a fairly good picture of the life, times, thoughts, and activities of Red Emma. Definitely recommended for more than just high school teachers! ... Read more

Book Description

In this play, historian and playwright Howard Zinn dramatizes the life of Emma Goldman, the anarchist, feminist, and free-spirited thinker who was exiled from the United States because of her outspoken views, including her opposition to World War I.

With his wit and unique ability to illuminate history from below, Zinn reveals the life of this remarkable woman. As Zinn writes in his Introduction, Emma Godman "seemed to be tireless as she traveled the country, lecturing to large audiences everywhere, on birth control ("A woman should decide for herself"), on the falsity of marriage as an institution ("Marriage has nothing to do with love"), on patriotism ("the last refuge of a scoundrel") on free love ("What is love if not free?") and also on the drama, including Shaw, Ibsen, and Strindberg. This book will be of immense interest to feminists, American historians, and people interested in the long history of resistance and protest in the United States.

Howard Zinn is professor emeritus at Boston University. He is the author of the classic A People's History of the United States. A television adaptation of the book is currently being co-produced by Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, and Chris Moore for HBO. Zinn has received the Lannan Foundation Literary Award for Nonfiction and the Eugene V. Debs award for his writing and political activism. Zinn is the author of the internationally acclaimed play Marx in Soho, which has been touring the country in performance since its release.

Customer Reviews (1)

Accurate and Needed but...
Zinn does an excellent job of introducing readers to Goldman, Berkman, Most, Reitman and others.Readers get an accurate sense of their personalities and concerns, a consequence of Zinn's ability to adapt actual source material in the dialogue.

The problem with play is that its intention seems to almost entirely consist in introducing readers to Goldman et al.Although that is a worthy aim, the play itself lacks the dramatic tension necessary to lend cohesion to its snapshots of Goldman's life.The play seems loosely organized around Berkman's incarceration and Goldman's erotic relationships.Because these events happened over several years, the play attempts to cover too much time and, consequently, lacks the dramatic intensity of a shortened time frame.

Still, for anyone who loves and studies Goldman (as I do), this is a must read.It's clear that Zinn fully appreciates the greatness of this much-neglected radical. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (1)

It was Worth the Wait!
The long awaited re-release of Emma Goldman's My Disillusionment in Russia was well worth the wait.This is simply a marvelous book.

This book continues the tradition of Bakunin (a contemporary of Marx) who argued that Marxism would lead to a state authoritarianism that would be just as exploitive and alienating as bourgeois capitalistic "democracies" if not more so.Goldman shows, as she would later argue in her essay "There is No Communism in Russia," that Marxist run economies and governments merely supplant the bourgeoisie as employer and coercive authority.They do not empower workers and communities to run their own affairs along free and cooperative socialistic lines.

Like many leftists during her time, Goldman initially supported the communist accession to power as preferable to the Tsarist regime.But her support was largely based on reports given by communists in the pay of the Bolsheviks.Goldman was deported from the USA because she spoke publicly against the draft.Although she probably would have won the case, she decided not appeal the deportation order because she wanted to lend her services to the Russian people and their revoution.It required little time for her to realize that Bolshevik claims for progress belied the reality in Russia.Everywhere she saw evidence of mass starvation, extreme censorship, political oppression, cronyism, mass imprisonments and executions, and the tacit contempt the Russian people had for the Bolsheviks.Her descriptions of Lenin should help to settle oft-repeated lie that Stalin was a Leninist aberration.He was the natural, if more efficient, successor of Lenin.

She deftly refutes the Marxian apologetic that only countries that have experienced extensive capitalistic development are best suited to enter into a revolutionary phase.If that is so, she asks, then why haven't England, Germany and the USA experienced the social revolution Marx predicted?She demonstrates that the Bolsheviks were more concerned with power than socialism and replaced the revolution with statism.The people, not the Bolsheviks, brought about the revolution in Russia, she argues.The Bolsheviks stole and then murdered it.

The narrative style of this work makes it riveting and real.Readers will get a good sense of the distinction between the libertarian socialism advocated by anarchism and the faux socialism advocated by Marxism.This is a great book. ... Read more

Book Description
In March 1906, Emma Goldman published the first issue of Mother Earth, a "Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature." Conceived as a forum for anarchists of every school and variety, Mother Earth laid the groundwork for American radical thought. It did more than report on the contemporary scene-it was part of the action-and its preoccupations preoccupy us still: birth control, women's rights, civil liberties, and questions of social and economic justice. Mother Earth appeared without interruption until August 1917, when it was killed by wartime postal censorship. Though Emma Goldman has since become a legendary figure, scarcely any material from her magazine has remained in print. This Mother Earth reader sets right this great wrong, and restores to public memory an important body of work-provocative writings by Margaret Sanger, Alexander Kropotkin, and dozens of other radical thinkers of the early twentieth century. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Red Emma's Mother Earth
Excellent anthology with witty, informative and intelligent prefaces to each chapter. Impossible to put down and sadly though most pieces were written approximately 100 years ago, the themes are as timely as ever/

A magnficent and long-overdue collection
Emma Goldman's magazine Mother Earth was one of the best and liveliest anarchist publications at the beginning of the 20th Century, but until this book was published almost everything which ever appeared in Mother Earth was nearly impossible to find. Peter Glassgold has done a fine job of culling some of the best works from the 5,000 or so pages of Mother Earth into this generous and fascinating collection.

The book is separated into six sections: Anarchism, The Woman Question, Literature, Civil Liberties, The Social War, and War and Peace. Within these sections are articles by classic anarchist writers such as Alexander Berkman, Ben Reitman, Voltairine de Cleyre, Peter Kropotkin, and Goldman herself. There are also a number of works by writers you might not expect to appear in such a book: Eugene O'Neill (what is suspected to be his first publication), Ben Hecht, Louise Bryant, Margaret Sanger, and Maxim Gorky. Peter Glassgold provides an informative and readable introduction, and there is a comprehensive index as well as a section of photographs, mostly of the covers of issues of Mother Earth (some by Man Ray).

Everyone interested in the history of anarchism, radical politics, and 20th-century thought should own this book. ... Read more

Book Description
Candace Falk's biography captures Goldman's colorful life as a social and labor reformer, revolutionary, anarchist, feminist, agitator for free love and free speech, and advocate of birth control. And it gives the reader a rare glimpse into Goldman as a woman, alone, searching for the intimacy of a love relationship to match her radiant social vision. Falk explores the clash between Goldman's public vision and private life, focusing on her intimate relationship with Ben Reitman, Chicago's celebrated social reformer, hobo king, and red-light district gynecologist. During this passionate and stormy relationship, Goldman lectured in public about free love and women's independence, while in private she struggled with intense jealousy and longed for the comfort of a secure relationship. Falk's account draws upon a serendipitous discovery of a cache of intimate letters between Goldman and Reitman. Falk then goes beyond Goldman's ten-year relationship with Reitman, following Goldman's inner passions through her years of exile and later life. Written with a literary sensitivity, Falk tells a riveting story, consistently placing Goldman in the context of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century radicalism. ... Read more

Book Description
Emma Goldman: A Documentary History of the American Years redefines the historical memory of Emma Goldman and illuminates a forgotten yet influential facet in the history of American and European radicalism. This definitive multivolume work, which differs significantly from Goldman's autobiography, presents original texts--a significant group of which are published or translated into English for the first time--anchored by rigorous contextual annotations. The distillation of years of scholarly research, these volumes include personal correspondence, newspaper articles, government surveillance reports from America and Europe, dramatic court transcripts, lecture notes, and previously unpublished documents retrieved from obscurity. Biographical, newspaper, and organizational appendices are complemented by in-depth chronologies that underscore the complexity of Goldman's political and social milieu.
Making Speech Free, 1902-1909, the second volume in the series, chronicles Goldman's pivotal role in the early battle for free expression. It highlights the relationship between the development of the right of free speech and turn-of-the-century anarchist ideas. The enactment of anti-anarchist laws and the organization of groups in protest occupy center stage among the primary documents. Within this frame, the volume presents Goldman's evolving attitudes toward violence in both its European and American contexts, the emergent revolution in Russia, and the beginnings of the Modern School education movement in America, the social significance of European modern drama, and the right of labor to organize against unfair working conditions in the United States. The volume features the early evolution of Goldman's magazine, Mother Earth, launched in 1906, which promoted a blending of modern literary and cultural ideas into her radical and social political agenda and became a platform for the articulation of her feminist critique, an expression of her international reach, and a marker of her desire to spread anarchist ideas outside the immigrant left. Making Speech Free also tracks Goldman's emergence as a writer and orator whose scathing critique of hypocrisy in all realms of life and politics would eventually capture the attention and imagination of America. ... Read more

Amazon.com
Forget all those New Left memoirs: for readers who want to know what it is to be a revolutionary in America, this is the book to read. At the turn of the 20th century, Emma Goldman (1869-1940) was probably the most hated woman in her adopted country. (She emigrated from Russia at age 17.) It was bad enough that she was an anarchist, accused of complicity in the 1901 assassination of President McKinley. But her vehement espousal of women's rights--including birth control--really enraged upright citizens. Goldman's marvelously militant autobiography gives ample evidence of her gift for bearing a grudge and inability to mince words--she decries fellow leftists at least as often as the bourgeoisie, especially after she is deported to the Soviet Union in 1919 and discovers that the Bolshevik Revolution is not what she hoped for. But Goldman's blazing honesty and unflinching commitment to unpopular causes make her a larger-than-life heroine. She does display the occasional human weakness, including a lengthy romance with a man whose infidelities torment this advocate of free love, but they're less interesting than her heroic challenge to America to live up to its ideals. Whether or not she was literally a bomb thrower remains a matter of debate. For posterity, her words are incendiary enough. --Wendy Smith Book Description
Anarchist, journalist, drama critic, advocate of birth control and free love, Emma Goldman was the most famous—and notorious—woman in the early twentieth century. This abridged version of her two-volume autobiography takes her from her birthplace in czarist Russia to the socialist enclaves of Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Against a dramatic backdrop of political argument, show trials, imprisonment, and tempestuous romances, Goldman chronicles the epoch that she helped shape: the reform movements of the Progressive Era, the early years of and later disillusionment with Lenin’s Bolshevik experiment, and more. Sounding a call still heard today, Living My Life is a riveting account of political ferment and ideological turbulence. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

Perfect service, a little over-packaged, new book
I'm happy with the purchase, just typing on the keyboard in the privacy of my own home, selecting a book, clicking on it, easy, quick, effecient.Book arrived quickly, new book.All was well in my world.Only complaint would be that 2 of the 3 books I ordered simultaneously came packaged together in an excessive amount of packaging.Overboard on the plastic wrap followed by extra cardboard for protection, followed by a box.Don't need all that for books.Need to think about the environment Amazon.

One of the most important books you'll ever read
This is the best autobiography I've ever read, because her life was lived with such commitment & independence. Certainly, she was hugely influential in her time, but her success was scratched out of nothing, with no support, and huge opposition. The difficulties and the times are conveyed amazingly well. The book will make you look carefully at your own life ... in ways that can only change it for the better.

bewat
NOTE:THIS IS VOLUME ONE ONLY!It's a great book but it is not labeled as just the first half of the memoir.

Enjoyable book, fun to read, informative
I could not disagree more with Goldman's ultimate philosophical conclusions, but I enjoyed this book, and volume II as well.Her essential humanity emerges, and it is a good case study and an interesting read, historically, philosophically and personally.She is no Mark Twain or Billy Faulkner, but her life was interesting and her prose adequately conveys the milieu she became enmeshed in.A fair degree of antecedent historical knowledge is necessary to fully enjoy this book, but you most likely have that or you wouldn't be reading about Emma to begin with.If you don't, or find that you are getting lost in the history and sequence, it would pay to do a little research to better understand what she lived through.It will also help you spot bias on Goldman's part.I heartily recommend this book.It is informative, enlightening and entertaining to boot.

Living Beyond Expectations
In her autobiography Emma Goldman explains her life, narrating the experience of marching to her own drummer. Depending on the reader's political expectations, Emma's life is either inspiring or downright terrifying. Those who believe in social conformity would probably be more comfortable moving on to other fodder.

Nevertheless, this eyewitness account of American and Russian history, ought not to be trivially dismissed. Emma fought for things we have taken for granted in modern life, such as birth-control and the eight-hour work day; she went to jail in the struggle to obtain these for us. This book explains how she lived her commitment to individual liberty, choosing who she would love, advocating revolution, and harrassing those of her "allies" who compromised on these principles.

Perhaps the most interesting portion of the book is her years in Russia. Here she describes arriving at the "Promised Land" of the peoples' revolution and how that mutated into a sense of disillusionment and horror at what she saw as the betrayal of that revolution by the "dictatorship of the proletariat."

Her writing style is nothing exceptional, but the story she weaves from the material of her life is nothing short of fascinating.Another reviewer suggested taking a break between volumes--I couldn't! I had to know what happened next.

Although there are a lot of pages to wade through, I will give this book as a gift to the young women in my life. I believe that Emma can serve as a role model for living one's own life, not living out the expectations of friends, family, or society. In a dysfunctional world, we have too few people who model this.

Emma gets three stars for writing style, but the powerful and plentiful content bring the rating up to five stars. Not to be missed.

(If you'd like to discuss this book or review, click on the "about me" link above & drop me an email. Thanks!) ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Useful Overview of Emma Goldman's Lifeand Times
I wasmildly starled to come across this title and a bit taken aback when I saw this book appearing in this series intended for hifh schoolers. Back when I was a youth fifty years ago, all I remember we had was the rather simplifled Landmark series on American hiatory.

As a long time tudent ofU.S. political and econmic history, especially the period of the oughts and teens of the twentieth century, I have seen several mentions of Emma Goldman in relation to the labor movement, socialism, and the Red revolution in Russia.

It is astonishing to me tat the right wing book burners and the vocierous "family values" crowd have not made a big fuss; they seem to believe that if persons reads about organized labor and socialism, they will become rabble rousers and riot in the streets. This is anologous to the movement to curtail sex education for fear that if one reads about it one will be tempted to try it.

Formulaic series such as this written following a template for length by defintion cnaoot be comprehensive. Similaely the Osprey titles on milirary hiatory and the Ballantine paperbacks "History of the Violent Century" serve a valid social purpose in satisfying a basic curiousity about a topic; the mildly curious would not read a definitve 500 pager about Goldman. Provided of course, tha if such a work may displease both the radical right and the fringe wild left, proving it is as neutral in stcking to the facts and leaving opinion to other more weighty works which can cover the myriad intricacies of such a controversial person as was Goldman.

Other famous and infamous labor movement characters of the times, such as Samule Gompers and Joe Hill also need a popular work for the mildly curious.

One could look her up in Wikipedia but those entries, as written by experts, are often either too superficial or biased. No matter how much one wants to be neutral, that is the nature of the endevour. But in turn, books written by a committee are often "dumbed down" to the point of uselessness.

For some reason, the American folk song movement of the mid twentieth century was mostly left wing oriented. Major paractioners such as Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger were prominent. I knew the latter but not the former.

I still remember group singing back in the sixties the Joe Hill song. It is a good song and its singing meant as muxh polirically to most ofus as the singing of Amzing Grace and other folk hymns by my Jewish friends meant religiously. Some magnificent songs are no longer sung in public because they are no longer thought to be "politically correct." Jusr likw aome the WWII era cartoons, and radio and TV programs of the so-called "Golden Age" are no longer played. It seems the members of a group can safely address each other by the vilest terms, but lord help those outside who use them in their presence. :0(.

So if you have a slight interest in Goldman, this is the book for you, just as others in this series cover other once prominent persons.

An Excellent Biography of an American Woman
Emma Goldman: American Individualist is a full account of the life of one of America's most notorious anarchists.The author, John Chalberg, takes the reader from her life as a poor, abused, and repressed youngster in Russia to the United States where the blood of the workingman gives her a purpose.But, not only does Chalberg concern the reader with Emma Goldman and anarchism, he also gives a nice account of other radicals of the time, such as socialism and communism and their most noted leaders.Thus, this book provides an excellent source of American history and politics as it is coming into the age of industry.Furthermore, Chalberg presents Emma Goldman, not as an evil, unruly, unamerican anarchist, but as a dedicated, motherly, sympatheic woman simply dedicated to helping the struggling American.Emma Goldman: American Individualist is insightful, well organized, and well executed. ... Read more

Book Description
The anarchist and radical hero Emma Goldman, brought to vivid life in a graphic biography by an acclaimed artist.

"You are a terrible child and will grow into a worse woman! You have no respect for your elders or for authority! You will surely end on the gallows as a public menace!"—Emma Goldman's childhood religion teacher

A wonderful retelling of the famous anarchist and radical icon Emma Goldman's extraordinary life, this graphic biography embodies the richness and drama of Goldman's story in a wholly original way.

A Dangerous Woman depicts the full sweep of a life lived to the hilt in the struggle for equality and justice. Emma Goldman was at the forefront of the radical causes of the twentieth century, from leading hunger demonstrations during the Great Depression—"Ask for work! If they do not give you work, ask for bread! If they do not give you work or bread, take the bread!"—to organizing a cloakmakers' strike, from lecturing on how to use birth control to fighting conscription for World War I, while her soulmate, Alexander Berkman, spent fourteen years in jail for his failed attentat against industrialist Henry Clay Frick.

Sharon Rudahl's lovely, energetic illustrations bring Goldman's many facets and passions to new life; her work belongs with the critically acclaimed graphic nonfiction of Alison Bechdel's Fun Home and Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis. Featuring a foreword by Alice Wexler, A Dangerous Woman is a marvelously compelling presentation of a woman devoted to revolutionizing her age. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Dangerous Graffix
I bought this to introduce Emma to a young lady and, after looking in it,
decided it would cancel any interest she might have had.Stick to Living My Life and imagine the visuals.

Real life Superhero
Emma Goldman is one of the big name names of American anarchists, as well as one of the earlier to contribute to free speech, birth control, and the labor movements. She was an amazing public speaker, something that is lost in this day of television and radio, and her writing still ranks amongst the classics of Anarchist thought for a free and just society. From her involvement in the shooting of Frick (though Alexander Berkman was a lousy shot) to free speech fights to labor struggles in Massachusetts to getting deported by Edgar Hoover, all the way to being amongst the first radicals to denounce the government of the Bolsheviks (which ostracized her amongst the left), and finally working to raise funds for the Spanish Revolutionary cause. She was jailed for fighting against the draft, advocating for birth control, and for "inciting a riot." In a lot of ways, the stuff she said then was visionary for the time period. She remains one of the most amazing people in history, and someone who gave her all so others could be free and live in a just world.

"Dangerous Woman: A Graphic Biography of Emma Goldman" can be best described as a graphic novel version of "Living My Life", and it's a real treat. The artist, Sharon Rudahl, does a great job capturing Goldman's turbulent and unique life, growing from a fiery Jewish peasant girl fleeing Russia to an active Anarchist speaker and organizer hated by the government, to the patron-saint of the American Anarchist movement, though small by the time of her death. She spares no detail, especially the parts about Emma's sex life and her many partners over the years. One of my favorite scenes in the book is when she has been sent by her mentor, Johann Most, on a speaking tour "Against the 8 Hour Day" (it was too little and was too reformist and not revolutionary enough.) She encounters an older man in the Chicago stop of the tour who tells her that while he understands why young people would be impatient with small demands, but "I won't live to see the revolution. Will I never have a little time for reading or to walk openly in the park?" After this encounter, Emma vowed never to let doctrine or ideology get in the way of a good fight that brought real change to real people's lives. That's a lesson that a lot of radicals then and now could learn and take to heart.
Today, the closest we in the United States have to an Emma Goldman is academics in ivory towers, as loud mouth voices in the sea of state and corporate rule. The speaking tours of yesterday is the youtube, internet, music albums and television of today, which is much more controlled than speaking in public used to be, though less prone to violent disruption by people who disagree with the author. It's hard to imagine a story like hers again where someone from such a humble beginning devotes her entire life, to the point where she refused to correct health problems like infertility, to the cause of fighting the existing order, and becoming such an international figure as she did. Maybe a new Emma Goldman of the internet or TV or music like hiphop will arise to become an inspiration to people's movements everywhere, like Subcommader Marcos in Chiapas has, or elsewhere. It's hard to say. Either way, check out Emma's life in graphic novel comic form, because she's a real life superhero in a way that Superman never could be.

Passionate Advocacy of A Passionate Advocate
Sharon Rudahl's "A Dangerous Woman" covers the life of a well-known anarchist around the turn of the century.Sharon's art is very appropriate for a fiery speechmaker; the plot as presented by Sharon never drags, and you get a book and a movie at the same time!

I had heard about Emma Goldman, but my political youth was spent in the socialist movement, not the anarchist movement, so I never researched Ms. Goldman's life or work.One piece I found interesting was Ms. Goldman's opposition to the amendment granting women the right to vote, and why she opposed it.Since my grandmother was a prominent suffragette, I approached this part of the book with some skepticism, but it was presented with such passion that I found myself agreeing in principle with some parts of Ms. Goldman's philosopy on this particular topic.Of course, hindsight is always 20/20, and it's difficult to go back in time to try to understand things with the perspective in effect at that time, but Ms. Rudahl does a fantastic job with her art of helping to build that paradigm.

I found it difficult to put the book down, it was so entertaining, and in a way that enlightens. Emma Goldman didn't live her life as an audition for a reality show, so you probably won't get that kind of stilted melodrama from it.What you WILL get is a fascinating historical presentation with Ms. Rudahl's art, and a dialog that both complements the art and creates it's own story.

A very fine book, and I heartily recommend buying it. ... Read more