MOTHERLY ANARCHIST

...All this Emma Goldman was, in spite of her lack of formal education and lack of so-called social advantages...

...Emma Goldman, while basically a benign mother figure, accepted the necessity of violence, but, by the time she was thirty, she believed that violence should be used only in defense of social betterment...

...No such understanding or forgiveness was shown by the American authorities really frightened by this strange female who, in the opinion of William Reedy of the St...

...She was only sixteen, but she was already a rebel...

...The result is a scholarly, friendly, and enlightening description of a life that was lived fully...

...However, her consistent opposition to the anarchists' participation in the Spanish government of 1937 proves her, in my opinion, a better theorist than Drinnon credits her to be...

...Emma Goldman was a leading feminist, a pioneer in the field of birth control, a champion of free speech, and an outspoken critic of all governmental opposition to human freedom, whether threatened from the Left or from the Right...

...Nor does his picture show Emma as a saint, but as a strong willed, extremely intelligent woman who was hard to live with...

...The role of the New York and Federal authorities in bringing about the deportation of Emma Goldman is not a pretty picture as painted by Drinnon...

...Reviewed by Francis Heisler A biographer who succeeds in bringing his subject matter to life does what he sets out to do...

...She soon became a radical under the tutorship of a young anarchist, Alexander Berkman, whose life remained intertwined with hers for the next forty-five years...

...Frightened by the overwhelming honesty and consequent effectiveness of this labor organizer, the authorities spent untold effort and money to get the country rid of her, since she continually reminded us of our moral cowardice for submitting to and condoning the inhuman social exploitation of the industrial revolution...

...It is more, because Drinnon, who admittedly likes and respects Emma Goldman, does not tamper with the truth and writes neither of one who had no imperfections nor of one who had none but imperfections...

...The quality of this biography is emphasized by the writer's ability to infuse life into secondary and even tertiary actors, and thus Berkman, John Most, and other radicals come alive...

...He even forgives her, if there is anything to forgive, particularly when she turned against the Russian revolution because of the use of violence by the Bolsheviks...

...Drinnon made good use of the voluminous correspondence between Goldman and her friends...

...If he does it with art and honesty, he does honor to himself and to his subject...

...She was born in Russia and came to this country about fifteen years before the turn of the century...

...Drinnon, although disagreeing with her on the "end justifying the means of violence," understands her...

...Richard Drinnon's biography of Emma Goldman is all that and more...

...She was the foremost anarchist lecturer in the United States, though Drinnon does not consider her a philosopher of that political theory...

...Louis Mirror, "was 8,000 years ahead of her age" and whose vision is that "of every truly great souled man or woman who has ever lived...

...She fought human exploitation at a time when our Supreme Court was deadly afraid that laws to restrict child labor, or hours of work for women, would undermine the Constitution and the American way of life...

...If the motivations of the subject are plausible and if the actions are part of the surrounding social history, then the biography will be vividly enjoyable...

...She was anti-war, with a consistency that is rarely matched by other pacifists...

...Emma Goldman, to be alive as she is in this book, had to be the main actress of her times, and that she was...