Crystal Eastman

In 1910, Crystal Eastman was one of the most conspicuous progressive reformers in America. By the 1920s, her ardent suffragism, insistent anti-militarism, gregarious internationalism, and uncompromising feminism branded her "the most dangerous woman in America" and led to her exile in England.
Yet a century later, her legacy in shaping several defining movements of the modern era--labor, feminism, free speech, peace--is unquestioned.

A founder of the ACLU and Woman's Peace Party, Eastman was a key player in a constellation of high-stakes public battles from the very beginning of her career. She first found employment investigating labor conditions--an endeavor that would produce her iconic publication, Work Accidents and the
Law, a catalyst for the first workers' compensation law. She would go on to fight for the rights of women, penning the Equal Rights Amendment with Alice Paul. As a pacifist in the First World War era, she helped to found the Civil Liberties Bureau, which evolved into the ACLU. With her brother, the
writer Max Eastman, she frequented the radical, socialist circles of Greenwich Village. She was also a radical of the politics of private life, bringing attention to cutting-edge issues such as reproductive rights, wages for housework, and single motherhood by choice.

As the first biography of Eastman, this book gives renewed voice to a woman who spoke freely and passionately in debates still raging today -- gender equality and human rights, nationalism and globalization, political censorship and media control, worker benefits and family balance, and the
monumental questions of war, sovereignty, and freedom.

"Crystal Eastman was a central figure in many of the defining social movements of the twentieth century -- labor, feminism, internationalism, free speech, peace. She drafted America's first serious workers' compensation law. She helped found the National Woman's Party and is credited as co-author of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). She helped found the Woman's Peace Party -- today, the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) -- and the American Union Against Militarism. She co-published the Liberator magazine. And she engineered the founding the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Eastman worked side-by-side with national and international suffrage leaders, renowned progressive reformers and legislators, birth control advocates, civil rights champions, revolutionary writers and artists. She traveled with a transatlantic crowd of boundary-breakers and innovators. And in virtually every arena she entered, she was one of the most memorable women known to her allies and adversaries alike. Yet today, her legacy is oddly ambiguous. She is commemorated, paradoxically, as one of the most neglected feminist leaders in American history. This first full-length biography recovers the revealing story of a woman who attained rare political influence and left a thought-provoking legacy in ongoing struggles. The social justice issues she cared about -- gender equality and human rights, nationalism and globalization, political censorship and media control, worker benefits and family balance, and the monumental questions of war, sovereignty, force, and freedom -- remain some of the most consequential questions of our own time"--

"An overdue biography of an influential suffragist, pacifist, and civil libertarian... Aronson leaves no doubt that Eastman was an inspiring figure who deserves the renewed attention that the book should bring." - Kirkus

"In Crystal Eastman: A Revolutionary Life, Amy Aronson has given us the great gift of a best friend we didn't know. Feminist, journalist, lawyer, friend of workers and enemy of militarists, Crystal Eastman may have been born a century too soon, but she is re-born now just when we need her most." -
Gloria Steinem

"Eastman's work and its challenges feel sharply relevant to today's changing world, and this engaging and careful biography will appeal to activists and students of history alike." - Booklist

"Crystal Eastman, founding mother of the ACLU, also played a starring role in early twentieth century battles for women's suffrage and equality, pacifism, internationalism, laborers' rights and safety, socialism, and economic equality. She founded and ran multiple influential organizations, often
simultaneously, and was viewed by her contemporaries as personally and professionally stunning. But until Amy Aronson's meticulously researched and masterful biography, only glimpses of Eastman's life and work were publicly available. Aronson's perceptive and sympathetic portrait finally enables us
to see the magnitude of this enchanting revolutionary who - due to her gender - was practically erased by history for many decades. At a time when we are being pressured to reduce ourselves to stereotypes and sound bites, Aronson offers us a role model of a woman who refused to be pigeonholed and
who insisted on living as well as fighting for her principles." - Susan Herman, president, ACLU

"Amy Aronson's thoroughly researched biography of pioneering visionary and activist Crystal Eastman is a splendid guide across the most urgent and ongoing issues of the 20th century. Feminist socialist pacifist, attorney journalist publisher, bridge builder and movement creator, Crystal Eastman's
commitment to global understanding engendered the American Civil Liberties Union and the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. Everyone concerned about peace, freedom, women's rights and human rights will be fortified by this important work." - Blanche Wiesen Cook, author of Eleanor
Roosevelt (3 vols.) and editor, Crystal Eastman on Women & Revolution

"This is the beautifully written and brilliantly incisive life story of one of the most influential and inspiring women in US history--whose name few people know. Thanks to Amy Aronson, Crystal Eastman now has the biography that she--and we--deserve." - Michael Kazin, author of War Against War: The
American Fight for Peace, 1914-1918 and Professor of History, Georgetown University

"Crystal Eastman once described herself as a 'militant idealist' who aspired to nothing less than 'global social justice.' Aronson's well researched, lucidly narrated, and highly engaging biography examines the life of this consummate activist who struggled to unite the personal and public aspects
of her politics." - Mari Jo Buhle, William R. Kenan Jr. University Professor, Brown University

"Aronson... focuses on Eastman's activism as a lens through which to illuminate cultural issues that resonate today... This meticulously researched book shines." - Library Journal

"Crystal Eastman's life was, as Ms. Aronson claims, revolutionary... Her passion sometimes worked against her, but a reader finishes this book feeling less sad for her than grateful to her biographer for capturing the whole of this noble, crazy, glorious life." - Wall Street Journal