[Paul Avrich] Sasha and Emma : The Anarchist Odyssey of Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman(pdf){Zzzzz}[BЯ]

In 1889 two Russian immigrants, Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, met in a coffee shop on the Lower East Side. Over the next fifty years Emma and Sasha would be fast friends, fleeting lovers, and loyal comrades. This dual biography offers an unprecedented glimpse into their intertwined lives, the lasting influence of the anarchist movement they shaped, and their unyielding commitment to equality and justice.

Berkman shocked the country in 1892 with "the first terrorist act in America," the failed assassination of the industrialist Henry Clay Frick for his crimes against workers. Passionate and pitiless, gloomy yet gentle, Berkman remained Goldman's closest confidant though the two were often separated-by his fourteen-year imprisonment and by Emma's growing fame as the champion of a multitude of causes, from sexual liberation to freedom of speech. The blazing sun to Sasha's morose moon, Emma became known as "the most dangerous woman in America." Through an attempted prison breakout, multiple bombing plots, and a dramatic deportation from America, these two unrelenting activists insisted on the improbable ideal of a socially just, self-governing utopia, a vision that has shaped movements across the past century, most recently Occupy Wall Street.

Sasha and Emma is the culminating work of acclaimed historian of anarchism Paul Avrich. Before his death, Avrich asked his daughter to complete his magnum opus. The resulting collaboration, epic in scope, intimate in detail, examines the possibilities and perils of political faith and protest, through a pair who both terrified and dazzled the world.

Editorial Reviews
From Booklist
*Starred Review* Emma Goldman would forever remember the November night in 1889 when she first met fellow anarchist Alexander “Sasha” Berkman: “Deep love for him welled up in my heart,” she later wrote, “a feeling of certainty that our lives were linked for all time.” Thanks to the extensive research of historian Avrich, completed by his daughter, Karen, readers feel the shared passions—for equality, for justice, for freedom—that forged the bond between these two firebrands, political passions that burned bright long after the cooling of the romantic passions that briefly united them as lovers. Readers will marvel at the indefatigable labors of this pair—speaking, writing, organizing—kindling new hopes for a society free from oppression and want. Still, the honest narrative exposes the dark underside of anarchist hopes, an underside evident in Berkman’s failed attempt to kill tycoon Henry Clay Frick and anarchist Leon Czolgosz’s assassination of President McKinley, an act inspired by Goldman’s incendiary rhetoric. A narrative laced with irony details the remarkable reorientation of this pair after they were deported to a Soviet Russia they had lauded as a utopia but soon fled as a monstrous dystopia. A fully human portrait of two tightly linked yet forever fiercely independent spirits. --Bryce Christensen
From Bookforum
Avrich’s new and comprehensive account is more than a memorial for her subjects; it is also a tribute to her late father, Paul Avrich, the premier historian of anarchist movements in America and Russia. Karen Avrich’s skilled editorial guidance delivers the full dramatic sweep that the subjects of Sasha and Emma demand, and beyond that, the book’s central strength is that it gives Berkman a place of equal prominence to Goldman. —Rochelle Gurstein

Publisher: Belknap Press; Sew edition (November 1, 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0674065980
ISBN-13: 978-0674065987