About the Author

Alexander Berkman was a leading writer and participant in the 20th century Anarchist movement. The young idealistic Berkman practised propaganda by deed, attempting to assassinate Henry Clay Frick during the Homestead Steel Strike of 1892. While imprisoned for the failed attempt, he wrote the classic tale of prison life Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist. After his release Berkman edited Emma Goldman's journal Mother Earth and his own newspaper The Blast! Deported from New York to his native Russia in 1919, where he saw first hand the failure of the Bolshevik revolution and dedicated himself to writing the classic primer on anarchism, What is Anarchism?