From the celebrated Russian intellectuals Michael Bakunin and Peter Kropotkin to the little-known Australian bootmaker and radical speaker J. W. Fleming, this book probes the lives and personalities of representative anarchists.
"It is ... in Mr. Avrich's composite picture of anarchism in America that the contradictions, the strength and weaknesses of anarchism as an ideology, as well as the extraordinary dedication and strength of character of its exponents, can be seen most clearly."--James Joll, New York Times Book Review "Believers in anarchism, along with those willing to probe beyond the rote dismissals of the creed as a violent tumult, have a rare intellectual feast in Avrich's work."--Colman McCarthy, Washington Post Book World "So powerfully does [Avrich] make his case that sometimes in Anarchist Portraits the impossible dream seems not quite so impossible."--Gary Kern, Washington Times "Avrich is the foremost American scholar of anarchism in this generation."--Robert Zaller, Philadelphia Inquirer
