"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 Olsen

"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

"To read the sometimes sappy, often moving, ever scandalous love letters of Emma Goldman and her great passion Ben Reitman is to ride the roller coaster of True Romance. Candace Falk renders a valuable service by giving us plain the inside story of this intense ten-year affair."-Alix Kates Shulman

Candace Falk's biography captures Goldman's colorful life as a social and labor reformer, revolutionary, anarchist, feminist, agitator for free love and free speech, and advocate of birth control. Ant it gives the reader a rare glimpse into Goldman as a woman, alone, searching for the intimacy of a love relationship to match her radiant social vision. Falk explores the clash between Goldman's public vision and private life, focusing on her intimate relationship with Ben Reitman, Chicago's celebrated social reformer, hobo king, and redlight district gynecologist. During this passionate and stormy relationship, Goldman lectured in public about free love and women's independence, while in private she struggled with intense jealousy and longed for the comfort of a secure relationship.

Falk's account draws upon a serendipitous discovery of a cache of intimate letters between Goldman and Reitman. Falk then goes beyond Goldman's ten year relationship with Reitman, following Goldman's inner passions through her years of exile and later life. Written with literary sensitivity, Falk tells a riveting story, consistently placing Goldman in the context of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century radicalism.

Candace Falk, 1998 John Simon Guggenheim Fellow, is the director and editor of the Emma Goldman Papers, a collaborative documentary editing project of the National Historical Publications and Records Commission of the National Archives and the University of California, Berkeley, and a recipient of the Kanner Prize for the Best Bibliographical Work in Women's and Gender History.