My Eighty-One Years of Anarchy

May Picqueray (1898 1983) missed none of the major events in history during her lifetime. In 1921, she sent a parcel bomb (it exploded without casualties) to the US ambassador in Paris, to protest against the infamous conviction and death sentence of Sacco and Vanzetti. In November 1922 she was commissioned by the CGTU Metal Federation at the Congress to attend the Red Trade Union International in Moscow, where she stood on a table and denounced the congress for feasting while the Russian workers starved. Her autobiography, My Eighty-one Years in Anarchy, is available here in English for the first time, translated by Paul Sharkey.