Author Event: Michael Willrich - "American Anarchy"

Michael Willrich, Brandeis professor and author of City of Courts and Pox, joins us for the launch of his new book, American Anarchy: The Epic Struggle between Immigrant Radicals and the US Government at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century. 

This is a free event but we ask that you RSVP in advance. You can do so through Eventbrite with the link below (no fees) or by calling us at 781-431-1160 during store hours (also no fees). 

You can add a purchase of American Anarchy onto your RSVP on Eventbrite. Copies will also be available for purchase at the event. Please note that you must purchase your copy of the book from Wellesley Books in order to have the author sign it at the event. 

If you do not plan to attend the event but would still like to buy the book, you can do so by scrolling down. Just remember that buying the book alone is not the same as an RSVP. 

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ABOUT THE BOOK

"This is an important, crucial purchase. Readers interested in the U.S. legal system, civil rights, and the history of American radical movements should definitely check out this title." —Library Journal (starred review)

In the early twentieth century, anarchists like Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman championed a radical vision of a world without states, laws, or private property. Militant and sometimes violent, anarchists were heroes to many working-class immigrants. But to many others, anarchism was a terrifyingly foreign ideology. Determined to crush it, government officials launched a decades-long “war on anarchy,” a brutal program of spying, censorship, and deportation that set the foundations of the modern surveillance state. The lawyers who came to the anarchists’ defense advanced groundbreaking arguments for free speech and due process, inspiring the emergence of the civil liberties movement.

American Anarchy tells the gripping tale of the anarchists, their allies, and their enemies, showing how their battles over freedom and power still shape our public life.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Michael Willrich is the Leff Families Professor of History at Brandeis University and a 2015 Guggenheim Fellow. He is the author of two award-winning books, City of Courts and Pox: An American History, and his writing has been published in the New York Times, the New Republic, and Mother Jones.

He lives in Wellesley, Massachusetts.  

(Photo credit: Dari Pillsbury)