In 1892, Alexander Berkman tried to assassinate Henry Clay Frick for his role in violently suppressing the Homestead Steel Strike. Berkman was unsuccessful. He spent the next fourteen years in prison, thirteen of them in Pennsylvania’s notorious Western Penitentiary. Upon his release, he wrote what was to become a classic of prison literature, and a profound testament to human courage in the face of oppression.

This new edition of his account of his years behind bars is introduced and fully annotated by Jessica Moran and Barry Pateman, both former associate editors of the Emma Goldman Papers at the University of California, Berkeley. Their efforts make this the definitive version of Berkman’s tale of his transformation within prison, his growing sympathy for those he’d considered social parasites, and the intimate relationships he developed with them. This edition includes a full, never-before-published transcription of the diary Berkman kept while he wrote his memoir, conveying the difficulties he had reliving his experiences, as well as the anarchist milieu he returned to after his incarceration.