George Woodcock (1912-1995) was a historian, political biographer, essayist, poet, and anarchist. He wrote biographies of such anarchist thinkers as Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, William Godwin, Oscar Wilde, and Peter Kropotkin. Throughout his life, Woodcock was given numerous awards for his work, but he refused several awards from the government of Canada on the grounds that he only accepted awards granted by his peers.

In this chapter, Woodcock discusses the anarchist movement in the United States. He contends that, similar to Europe, the American anarchist movement evolved until it fused with anarcho-syndicalist thought, leaving labor organizations like the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) as the most important revolutionary organizations in the US.