American Anarchy: The Epic Struggle Between Immigrant Radicals and the U.S. Government at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century

Brandeis University historian Willrich (Pox: An American History) examines late 19th– and early 20th–century anarchism through a legal lens in this innovative account, demonstrating how the anarchist movement’s “assertions of personal liberty against institutional power” left an indelible mark on America’s cultural memory and jurisprudence. He focuses on the high-profile trio of Emma Goldman (whose writings were cited as motivation by President McKinley’s assassin), her romantic and ideological partner Alexander Berkman (charged with numerous crimes, including the attempted murder of industrialist Henry Clay Frick), and their longtime legal defender Harry Weinberger. Like many of their revolutionary compatriots, Berkman and Goldman were repeatedly in court. And though anarchists often derided law as nothing more than “so much patriotic bunting, which the state draped over everything,” many came to rely upon the clever legal machinations of sympathetic lawyers. Ironically, anarchist recourse to legal defense reinforced state institutions, since many of the lawyers who tirelessly defended them, like Weinberger, believed that “the Constitution and the common law were the best available bulwarks for individual liberty against the increasing power of the modern state.” Drawing heavily on primary sources, including court records and correspondence, Willrich combines a riveting legal narrative with an astute analysis of American political history. It’s a revealing study of an overlooked foundation of American notions of liberty. (Oct.)