Laura M. Westhoff is associate professor of history and education and chair of the history department at the University of Missouri–St. Louis. She received her PhD from Washington University. Her publications include A Fatal Drifting Apart: Democratic Social Knowledge and Chicago Reform, 1890-1920 (The Ohio State University Press) and numerous articles and book chapters. Her current book project, Educating for Activism: Democratic Practices in the Twentieth Century, is under contract with University of Illinois Press.
Goddess of Anarchy recovers not only Lucy Parson’s story, but also provides a window onto the richness of Chicago’s radical culture and a broader national network of labor activists in the early twentieth century.