Description
Book SynopsisWas she a selfless political activist? A feminist heroine? A gifted writer who rose from poverty to become a leading journalist and author of the cult classic Daughter of Earth? A spy for the Soviet Union? Or all of these things? Drawing on fifteen years of intensive research and unprecedented access to previously unpublished documents, this vibrant book brings to life one of the twentieth century''s most fascinating women. Ruth Price traces Agnes Smedley''s unlikely trajectory from a small Missouri town to the coal country of Colorado; to Berkeley and Greenwich Village; to Berlin, Moscow, and China. Fueled by a fury at injustice, Smedley threw herself headlong into the crucial issues of the time, from Indian independence to birth control, women''s rights, and the revolution in China. Her friends included such figures as Margaret Sanger, Langston Hughes, Emma Goldman, Jawaharlal Nehru, Mao Zedong, and many others. Perhaps most important, Price uncovers an astonishing truth: Smedley, l
Trade ReviewAn exceptionally rich and exhaustively researched biography of one of the cold war's most enigmatic characters.... Price's painstaking portrait of this tenacious iconoclast is a revelatory wonder, confirming what intense government investigations could not, but successfully depicting Smedley's motivations as sincere rather than sinister. * Booklist *
Price has clearly devoted a significant amount of time and effort to researching Agnes Smedley, and her careful examination pays off in this intimate yet inclusive biography. * Library Journal *
Masterful, beautifully written.... Price paints a vibrant portrait not only of her subject but of the many worlds in which she was a major player. Price captures neatly and with great nuance the complicated, often contradictory impulses and activities of these political movements. But at the heart of the book is her clear-eyed portrait of the very complicated Smedley, who acted out of humane motives but not always for the best causes.... Smedley shines here as the prototype of the 20th-century feminist who is driven not only to claim her own personal, sexual, and political freedom but to play it out on the international stage. * Publishers Weekly *
It is owing to the strength and brilliance of Price's rivetingly well-written book that one can disagree with her conclusion and her desire to depict Smedley as a heroine, and still recommend her work as a moving and genuinely dramatic biographical portrait. * National Review *
Based on astonishingly thorough research in newly available Chinese, Russian, British, and American archives.... Her account of how a poorly educated woman from a dysfunctional Midwestern family became a figure in the public and clandestine drama of twentieth-century radical politics is a fascinating story. * Weekly Standard *
A deeply sympathetic and yet starkly revealing portrait of one of our best known feminist heroines. It beautifully evokes the tensions of a radical life, without exonerating her for the questionable choices she made. Best of all, this carefully researched biography reads like a novel. You wont be able to put it down. * Alice Kessler-Harris, author of In Pursuit of Equity: Women, Men, and the Quest for Economic Citizenship in Twentieth Century America *
