author
Alexander Berkman
1870–1936
A fiery radical, gifted speaker, and restless witness to his age, he wrote from the front lines of labor struggle, prison life, and revolution. His books turn political conviction into lived experience, mixing urgency with sharp, human detail.
3 Audiobooks
Deportation, its meaning and menace Last message to the people of America by Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman
by Alexander Berkman, Emma Goldman
Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist
by Alexander Berkman
About the author
Born in Vilnius in 1870, then part of the Russian Empire, he emigrated to the United States as a teenager and became a leading figure in the anarchist movement. He was closely associated with Emma Goldman, and his life was shaped by activism, imprisonment, exile, and constant political debate.
He is especially remembered for writing that grew directly out of experience. After serving many years in prison following his 1892 attack on industrialist Henry Clay Frick, he later drew on that time in Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist. He also wrote The Bolshevik Myth, a powerful account of his growing disillusionment with the Russian Revolution after visiting Soviet Russia.
Berkman died in Nice, France, in 1936. What still makes his work compelling is the way it brings together history and personality: the arguments are intense, but so are the doubts, hopes, and hard-earned observations behind them.