My admiration of Emma Goldman demands that, someday, I read her two volume autobiography, but until I can bring myself to sit down with 800 pages of someone's personal thoughts and deeds, I settle for Mr. Chalberg's much more manageable, and objective, 240 page biography of this Russian-born, American individualist who helped give birth to modern libertarianism.
Emma Goldman's extraordinary life was characterized by a lifelong struggle against governments far more powerful than she. Having emigrated to America at 16, she carried with her the injustices of the Russian empire and the hope for a new, fairer existence in America. But after realizing that America was plagued by some of the same inequities she had suffered in her homeland, beliefs crystalized by the Haymarket Riot, she took up her anarchist pen and signed away a normal life by writing and then publishing essays and pamphlets which challenged the oppressive policies of successive American governments. For this, she was hounded and spied upon by authorities looking for a reason to deport her. When she advocated against the citizen draft for the First World War, she finally gave them that reason and she was thrown out of the country, returning to Russia where she was one of the first intellectuals to see through Vladimir Lenin.
Mr. Chalberg covers the major events in Goldman's life, articulating her politics and the core principles that motivated them. He also delves into her complex love life which seems to have brought her no more happiness than her public life which ended badly. Her particular strain of individualism, while admirable in its advocation of the end to all personal prejudice, was staunchly anti-war, a position which obligated her to oppose the Second World War against Hitler. This may not be the most lyrical or insightful of biographies, but Mr. Chalberg's thorough and concise account of exceptional individual does honor to a subject worthy of more attention than she receives. (3/5 Stars)
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