Alexander Berkman (1870-1936) was a leading writer and participant in the twentieth-century anarchist movement. The young, idealistic Berkman practiced "propaganda by deed" attempting to assassinate Henry Clay Frick during the Homestead Steel Strike of 1892. While imprisoned, he wrote the classic tale of prison life Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist. After his release, Berkman edited Emma Goldman's Mother Earth and his own paper, The Blast! When he was deported from New York City to his native Russia in 1919, and saw firsthand the failure of the Bolshevik revolution, Berkman dedicated himself to writing his now quintessential political primer, Now and After.