Candace Falk – författare

Emma Goldman: A Documentary History of the American Years reconstructs the life of Emma Goldman through significant texts and documents. These volumes collect personal letters, lecture notes, newspaper articles, court transcripts, government surveillance reports, and numerous other documents, many of which appear here in English for the first time. Supplemented with thorough annotations, multiple appendixes, and detailed chronologies, the texts bring to life the memory of this singular, pivotal figure in American and European radical history.Volume 1: Made for America, 1890-1901 introduces readers to the young Emma Goldman as she begins her association with the international anarchist movement and especially with the German, Jewish, and Italian immigrant radicals in New York City. From early on, Goldman's movement through political and intellectual circles is marked by violence, from the attempted murder of industrialist Henry Clay Frick by Goldman's lover, Alexander Berkman, to the assassination of President William McKinley, in which Goldman was falsely implicated. The documents surrounding these events illuminate Goldman's struggle to balance anarchism's positive gains and its destructive costs. This volume introduces many of the themes that would pervade much of Goldman's later writings and speeches: the untold possibilities of anarchism; the transformative power of literature; the interplay of human relationships; and the importance of free speech, education, labor, women's freedom, and radical social reform.

Emma Goldman: A Documentary History of the American Years reconstructs the life of Emma Goldman through significant texts and documents. These volumes collect personal letters, lecture notes, newspaper articles, court transcripts, government surveillance reports, and numerous other documents, many of which appear here in English for the first time. Supplemented with thorough annotations, multiple appendixes, and detailed chronologies, the texts bring to life the memory of this singular, pivotal figure in American and European radical history.Volume 2: Making Speech Free, 1902-1909 extends many of the themes introduced in the previous volume, including Goldman's evolving attitudes toward political violence and social reform, intensified now by documentary accounts of the fomenting revolution in Russia and the legal opposition toward anarchism and labor organizing in the United States. Always an impassioned defender of free expression, Goldman's launch of her magazine Mother Earth in 1906 signaled a desire to bring radical thought into wider circulation, and its pages brought together modern literary and cultural ideas with a radical social agenda, quickly becoming a platform for her feminist critique, among her many other challenges to the status quo. With abundant examples from her writings and speeches, this volume details Goldman's emergence as one of American history's most fiercely outspoken opponents of hypocrisy and pretension in politics and public life.

Emma Goldman could not have known that the years from 1910 to 1916 would be her most prolific, perhaps the most celebrated period in her entire life, both then and now. Reveling in love and in anarchy, cushioned by a time of comparative tolerance for challenging ideas and interest in the new, Goldman blossomed as a political theorist, author, orator, and internationalist. The circles of her influence rippled away from the predominantly immigrant radical culture of New York City's Lower East Side and moved into a broader milieu of bohemians and radical intellectuals. With a remarkable ability to articulate the wrongs of a country permeated by brutal labor violence and dire poverty—accentuated by unprecedented wealth—Goldman sought to incite the public either to take action or to empathize with those who did.This volume's primary sources include a remarkable selection of letters, newspaper reportage, government surveillance documents, essays and speeches, photographs, and lecture bills, all paired with detailed scholarly annotation. In addition, the volume is prefaced by a narrative and analytical essay by Candace Falk.

“What this remarkable book does . . . is to remind us of that passion, that revolutionary fervor, that camaraderie, that persistence in the face of political defeat and personal despair so needed in our time as in theirs.” -Howard Zinn“Fascinating …With marvelous clarity and depth, Candace Falk illuminates for us an Emma Goldman shaped by her time yet presaging in her life the situation and conflicts of women in our time.” -Tillie OlsenOne of the most famous political activists of all time, Emma Goldman was also infamous for her radical anarchist views and her “scandalous” personal life. In public, Goldman was a firebrand, confidently agitating for labor reform, anarchism, birth control, and women’s independence. But behind closed doors she was more vulnerable, especially when it came to the love of her life. Reissued on the sesquicentennial of Emma Goldman's birth, Love, Anarchy, & Emma Goldman is an account of Goldman’s legendary career as a political activist. But it is more than that-it is the only biography of Emma Goldman. The flow of her life and words is at its core. Here, Candace Falk offers an intimate look at how Goldman’s passion for social reform dovetailed with her passion for one man: Chicago activist, hobo king, and red-light district gynecologist Ben Reitman. This takes us into the heart of their tumultuous love affair, finding that even as Goldman lectured on free love, she confronted her own intense jealousy.   As director of the Emma Goldman papers, Falk had access to over 40,000 writings by Goldman-including her private letters and notes-and she draws upon these archives to give us a rare insight into this brilliant, complex woman’s thoughts. The result is both a riveting love story and a primer on an exciting, explosive era in American politics and intellectual life.