About the Encyclopedia

The Encyclopedia of the American Left brings together scholarship on the history of left movements — socialist, communist, anarchist, and New Left — in the United States from the 1860s to the present. Mari Jo Buhle, Paul Buhle, and Dan Georgakas began work on the Encyclopedia in 1987. The first edition, which brought together hundreds of essays by both academics and activists, was put out by Garland in 1990, and in 1998, Oxford University Press released a second, greatly expanded edition of the Encyclopedia.

Thanks to generous support from the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation and a grant from the Democratic Socialists of America Fund, Verso presents this new digital edition of the Encyclopedia, free and accessible to all. This third edition of the Encyclopedia builds upon the astounding proliferation of new scholarship since the turn of the century. The original contributors updated their entries and sources, and many more scholars joined the project, including Raymond Tyler who has joined as an associate editor. The current edition is approximately three times larger than the original and incorporates recent research across a range of disciplines. Many of the new essays showcase innovative techniques developed through oral history, documentary film, popular culture analysis, and biography. Combined with traditional scholarly approaches, these efforts recover much of a hitherto lost history of American radicalism. Our hope is that this free encyclopedia will provide vital information for the growing socialist movement in the United States and globally.