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when i first sat down to read this book i assumed i'd read it in parts over the next two weeks. instead i was instantly captivated and finished it in 48 hours. Karl is either a naturally great storyteller who can make a great book on his first try, or he had a great editor. but perhaps the biggest role was played the fact that his life story almost feels like it was made up, despite the fact that it was actually made to be more ""believable"" in the book than it actually is. my only complaints are the ones that couldn't be fixed. i wish the book didn't stop when Karl was 21 when his life continued to be amazing and interesting for many years thereafter. i wish he didn't have to hide himself being jewish, and even moreso wish he didn't have to hide his activism as a result of that change. but alas, it was Germany of 1907, and while Karl was very proud of this book and didn't hide the fact he wrote it from members of his community, it's understandable why he also felt the need to hide his identity from most readers. this is a foundational piece of transgender literature, but it's also just a great read overall. you should read it for its historical value, but it's also a book to simply enjoy.

this is a four star book. it's good, the author has clearly done their work, it's nuanced and it presents good theory. hold all of that in mind because now i'm gonna be negative.

due to the nature of the work, pretty much all given examples are simplified, and some of them (or at least those i know well enough to notice) have occasional omissions or errors. this however doesn't hurt the conclusion, especially since the conclusion is nuanced - not "humans are anarchists" but "humans can do anarchism", not "anarchism always works" but "anarchism can work". (for the curious folks, the specific examples i'm thinking of are the Israeli Kibbutzim, Wikipedia and the island of Rapa Nui.) the weakest chapter by far, at least in my opinion, is chapter 4 - environment, though possibly the fact i've recently read "The Solutions are Already Here" (a five star book specifically about anarchism and the environment) plays a factor. the strongest, by contrast, is the first, possibly due to being the most nuanced. to me, of all chapters, it is the one that best speaks the important message of this book: anarchy works, we just have to choose it. perhaps my biggest issue with the book is the one i least know how to fix - that it sits in the uncomfortable space of intending to convince while by its very nature being mostly read by those already convinced. that is sadly the nature of almost every theory book under the sun, anarchist or not, and the ways to deal with it are either acknowledge this fact and aim it only at those already within the movement (as even those already in on an idea still always benefit from theory), or ignore it and hope your book becomes a gateway for at least some newcomers, somehow. this book did what to me seems the more common choice among anarchist, and chose the latter.

despite all my criticisms, this is a good book. even those who already read a bunch of theory like me can benefit from the new outlooks and varieties of anarchism offered by this book. there's better books talking specifically about anarchist organising, about anarchist economies, about anarchist ecology, about anarchist history throughout the world. but this one does a good job talking about them all at once. this is a four star book.

it's not fair to give this book 5 stars, because i've given other books 5 stars in the past, and they pale in comparison. i've had my mind blown multiple times every chapter, and there's five of them. it's clear a lot of care was put into this book, and that care paid off. this book is at once depressing, because the solutions are already here, and encouraging, because the solutions are already here. and if that's not the correct way to address the human condition, i don't know what is. at the end of this book, i am left with the taste of the vision in the final chapter, feeling like i've been awoken from the sweetest of dreams - at once sad to find it was but a dream, and happy to have remembered it. now all i have is to wait for the day this dream becomes reality.