More Powerful Than Dynamite: Radicals, Plutocrats, Progressives, and New York's Year of Anarchy [ハードカバー]

A famous anarchist, Alexander Berkman, once wrote that his times were not those "for theorizing, for fine-spun argument and phrases. With machine guns trained upon the strikers, the best answer is-dynamite".
The history of anarchism is well-known and documented. So is the history of modern anarchism. The most significant moments of it were at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, when radicals killed the Russian Tsar; the president of France; the prime minister of Spain; the empress of Austria and the king of Italy as well as the US president Mckinley in 1901 and the king of Greece in 1913. President Theodore Roosevelt warned that the anarchist movement "is the enemy of humanity, the enmy of all mankind".
One should remember the inhumane scale of twentieth-century life, when monopoly corporations left no space for independent individuals. Capitalists everywhere, especially in the USA , trampled upon their employees's rights, while cities degraded the families who lived in jumbled and horrible tenements. Children and their parents were exploited shamelessly. To protest against these harsh and abnormal conditions, the anarchist movement spread its theories and actions, seconded by another movement-that of the Progressivism. Thus both movements shared their sympathy for the individual's plight in a mass society.
Of the many philosophies that emerged from the Enlightenment, Anarchism waas the most hopeful. Humanity was perfectible and each could prosper. Self-government was enough and there was no need for a central one, while there would not be any need for authority other than one's own conscience. The use of government-policing, jailing, war making-were all made necessary by the twisted morality of capitalism.
The USA was on the verge of revolution in 1914 and the numerous strikes, in particular those of the miners in Colorado, only proved this point.
Thai Jones' book is a very good and captivating addition to the literature of the history of Anarchism in the United States, and can be considered a very good micro-history of the anarchist movement in New York. Explosions, mass demonstrations,various trials, incarcerations of many anarchists-some of them prominent and some of them less-known figures-all these make their appearances in this volume. The main villain here is John D, Rockefeller, Jr, who was widely vilified for the massacre at Ludlow, where his company's striking workers were butchered.
Among the figures mentioned, you can find Emma Goldman, Upton Sinclair and Frank Tannenbaum, a homeless teenager who led his followers into the city's churches and paid for this"crime". Another anarchist was Becky Edelson, who was born in Odessa and who, in 1892, came the the USA where she left her family to live with the radicals at the early age of thirteen. She later became the lover of Berkman and did not hesitate to spit millionaires' faces.
There are also polce figures, among them Max Schmittberger, who exposed to what extent New York was rotten and corrupt; he explained how police patrolmen purchased their appointments and then paid again to be promoted. In addition, he sketched the system of coercion and collusion, from chief to roundsman and revealed the extent of and the use of protection for any vice or crime in the city which could be obtained at any price.
This book is a compelling and fascinating glimpse into one of the darkest chapters in the annals of New York, serving as a mirror of the USA history in general at those times. What this book offers is another proof of the famous saying by Gramsci who wrote that "all history is contemporary history". The Occupy Wall Street movement is not something new; its origins are to be found one century earlier. Thai Jones has written the history of the haves and haves-not in a gripping and stimulating way, with many characters peopling each chapter of his book, supported by many pages of documentation and revealing pictures.

Prepare for a passage through time as Dr. Jones's vivid prose draws you into a conflict that gripped New York City, one century ago. Anarchists, Rockefellers, and a well-meaning but impotent mayoral administration are the leading protagonists in this drama over the character of capitalism and the place of plutocrats in a democratic society. But don't let the theatrics mislead you. This is no novel. The narration is drawn from period publications and balanced by careful analysis--all the way through to its enlightening dénouement.

Throughout this richly researched and artfully crafted work, Jones treats readers to an engaging portrait of New York at a distinct moment in time. In the process, he reveals much about the machinations of class and politics in the United States. Jones skillfully combines the strategies of historian and journalist: he uses plentiful, primary-source-based evidence to support his claims while respecting the notion that a serious history book can, in fact, have "characters" and a narrative arc. Scholarly respectability, and a page-turner... perfect combination.