Beer and Revolution: The German Anarchist Movement in New York City, 1880–1914 by Tom Goyens (review)

Abstract

of Davis’s work, Redding notes that we must keep in mind Davis’s young age when she produced said works. Redding notes how her well-documented opposition to the U.S. prison system has come to fruition in current social discourse and activism. As I read Redding’s reflection on Davis’s prison reform writing, I also cannot help but think of the Black Lives Matter movement, the tragic events that prompted the movement, and how both together reify Davis’s adept conflagration of the prison and plantation systems. I would argue that the book is a useful primer for the budding public intellectual but I would not want to attribute use-value to a book as an intellectual methodology, as it perhaps runs contrary to the author’s ethos of celebrating thought for thought’s sake. In sum, this book is a selective sampling of left-leaning thought guided not by filling in all of the necessary gaps in the readers’ radical education but rather by the author following his intellectual bliss, and that is to be applauded. Audiences for this book include the independent intellectual/activist, scholars working in academia (but not necessarily of the academy) in fields as diverse as English, philosophy, rhetoric, communication studies and critical cultural studies. Current debates about whether current social movements are or are not realizing sufficient change may be considered as less important from this book’s perspective than the fact that we are fostering healthy traditions of critical thought. gordon alley-young