It took me a year or two of marching with a black bandanna on, going to Anarchist Black Cross meetings, sitting in with Food Not Bombs, going anti-commercial Christmas caroling, reading radical literature, talking to former squatters, and playing folk punk shows, but at a certain point I realized the "anarchist scene" wasn't for me. If I had read this book earlier, I feel like I may have saved myself some trouble.

I think many of Goldman's points, in many of her essays, raise valid concerns. I believe that, in some ways, her commentary on America's power structure remains true to this day (with an increasingly authoritarian government, it makes sense). But, unfortunately, many of her essays just aren't relevant anymore, and some of her concerns seem outdated to the point of being rightist/conservative.

Take for example, in her discussion of the military, she argues that one example of the evils it can cause is the "sex perversion" of "male prostitution". Putting aside any discussion about morality with respect to prostitution itself, it seems evident that her true concern is men bunking so close to one another. These pages in the essay entitled "Patriotism" might find renewed use in pro-Don't Ask Don't Tell pamphlets or the like.(Her Wikipedia claims that she was vehemently against discrimination targeting the GLBTQ community, as it were, during her time, but no supporting evidence is contained herein.)

Likewise, her discussions of sex and gender are frequently suspect, as she ascribes trait after trait to misrepresented groups of women's rights organizers, etc, and frequently attacks first wave feminists in the later essays.

In terms of dating herself, one has only to look at her essay on Puritanism, or on the current dramas of her time (which she feels the need to summarize for us, one after the other, only to reiterate her point that drama is a useful vehicle for political advocacy as her BIG CONCLUSION).

I can't really blame Emma Goldman for her missteps in these essays--they were written at the turn of the century. But I CAN blame contemporary anarchists for ruining any decent points Goldman makes by cherry-picking sentimentality from her meandering antique rhetorical arguments and subsequently wheat-pasting slogans all over campus. Regardless, "it was okay" is the best I can give this collection.