Customer Reviews

Anarchy!: An Anthology of Emma Goldman's Mother Earth

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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.

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/