"Cornell’s book is a perfect fit for a broad array of social and political leaders and thinkers, from young activists who grew up scrawling anarchy symbols on their lockers, to academics who study the means and motives of social change."—Melissa Wuske Foreword
"Unruly Equality makes a real contribution to the history of American anarchism... Cornell's book is... strong on the facts... [and] tells a forgotten story."—Transcend Media Service
The book is scholarly and highly readable... Highly recommended."—T.S. Martin Choice
Andrew Cornell’s impressive volume is a major contribution. The heroic era of anarchism had, sadly, already passed when Cornell takes up his main focus, 1915–72, and the fine points of that earlier period remain locked into a variety of ethnic language sources – Russian to Hungarian and Finnish – that have yet to be tapped. Still, the smaller milieu of mostly English-language egalitarians, which experienced several prominent bursts after World War II, in the late 1960s, and again around the most recent turn of centuries, have a unique story to be told, and no one has told it better than Cornell.—Socialism and Democracy
"An ambitious stab at explaining how anarchist subculture and politics have cometo look the way they do in the present tense.... a thorough, readable introduction..."—Maximum RocknRoll Review
“Filled with unforgettable characters, plain heroism, impressive archival discoveries, and tough-minded judgments,
Unruly Equality sharply challenges the view that the twentieth century saw anarchist activism and thought thoroughly eclipsed by the ascendancy of scientific socialism within social movements. Influential within campaigns for empowering immigrant workers, African Americans opposing Jim Crow, peacemakers, and the artistic imagination, the anarchists whose lives Cornell so dramatically recovers tested and reinvented their ideas in struggle.”—David Roediger, author of
Seizing Freedom: Slave Emancipation and Liberty for All “
Unruly Equality is history for movement builders. In recovering the captivating story of twentieth-century U.S. anarchism, Cornell provides crucial insights into the development of direct democracy, non-hierarchy, prefiguration, and other concepts animating contemporary global movements. Highly readable and theoretically sharp, this book is a vital tool for world changers and scholars alike.”—Marina A. Sitrin, author of
Everyday Revolutions: Horizontalism and Autonomy in Argentina “
Unruly Equality shows that a new version of anarchist politics emerged in the postwar decades that was critical of mainstream culture and intent on challenging authority and transforming everyday life; the radical politics of the ’60s, which at the time seemed to come out of nowhere, had roots in fact in the new anarchism of the previous decades. Cornell’s scholarly—and at the same time lively and engaging—account of radical politics in a little-studied period gives us a deeper understanding of the development of radical politics in the latter half of the twentieth century. This book is crucial reading for anyone interested in that history.”—Barbara Epstein, author of
The Minsk Ghetto 1941–
1943: Jewish Resistance and Soviet Internationalism