Anarchy and Anarchists

Schaack, Michael J.Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.4

Word count: 2M words
Chapters: 196

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Anarchy and Anarchists by Michael J. SchaackAuthor: Schaack, Michael J.,Language: English, Class: HX: Social sciences: Socialism, Communism, Anarchism, Release Date: Aug 15, 2016

Editor's review

Anarchy and Anarchists is a historical work by Michael J. Schaack, released free of charge by Project Gutenberg. Its value lies not in neutral sociological analysis but in presenting the late nineteenth-century American official view of the anarchist movement and the vigilance it inspired: the author's identity and stance are themselves part of the historical record, letting readers see how law enforcement of the time understood, classified, and responded to radical movements. The book touches on immigration, labor conflict, and urban policing, making it useful to researchers of American social, political, and public-opinion history. A caveat: the book carries pronounced period biases and should not be taken as an objective general history. Read it alongside later scholarship, attending to its narrative frame and word choices, to understand how a discourse of panic was constructed.

Who it's for

A good fit for

University students and researchers of American social and political history
Readers interested in the history of radical movements and the construction of public opinion
Writers seeking primary English sources for papers
Those interested in late nineteenth-century American cities and immigration

Not a good fit for

General readers seeking a neutral general history or introductory overview
Beginners easily swayed by a single partisan narrative
Casual readers looking only for light historical storytelling

Reading tips

Start with a scholarly introduction to understand the author's stance before the main text.
Note the author's value judgments and word choices as you read.
Compare with modern historiography to check facts and interpretations.
Read selectively by topic: labor, immigration, or policing chapters.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Is the book's stance objective?

The book carries pronounced period and official biases, with the author taking a vigilant attitude toward the anarchist movement. It is better suited as a historical source for studying the public opinion and law-enforcement perspective of the time than as a neutral general history of social movements; read it critically.

Is it suitable as an introductory read?

Not really. The book involves substantial historical background and figures and events, and its narrative is tendentious, so readers without relevant background may misread it. It is advisable to have some grounding in late nineteenth-century American social and political history first.

How can I get the original English text?

The book is released by Project Gutenberg as a free public-domain e-book; search for it by title or author on their website and download it in common formats such as plain text and e-book, at no cost.

Comments

Find this book

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Schaack, Michael J. Author · American

Schaack, Michael J. was an officer of the Chicago Police Department in the United States. Publicly available information about his life is limited, and details such as his birth and death years and educational background are unknown. He is known to later generations for writing Anarchy and Anarchists, a book that, from the perspective of a participant and law-enforcement officer, recounts the Haymarket affair in late nineteenth-century Chicago and the surrounding anarchist movement. As a police officer, Schaack writes from a distinctly official standpoint, offering a detailed account of the social unrest, labor protests, and radical political groups of the period. The work serves as an important primary source for the study of American labor history and immigrant political communities. Because public information is limited, his writing style and historical influence are mainly reflected through this single work, whose portrayal of anarchists has long been both a reference point and a subject of controversy in related historical discussion.