THE LIVES OF AGNES SMEDLEY

"I may not be innocent, but I'm right" is the epigraph that begins this masterful, beautifully written and researched biography of Agnes Smedley. It captures perfectly the ironic and impassioned attitude that defines this writer, crusader and political organizer who died in 1950, at age 58, at the height of her fame and in the center of an international furor over charges that she was a spy for the Soviet Union. While Price discovers that, despite her denials, Smedley was indeed a spy, this information, though important, is the book's least interesting aspect. Price, in her first work of nonfiction, paints a vibrant portrait not only of her subject but of the many worlds in which she was a major player: the bohemian world of Greenwich Village in 1917, where she worked for groups fighting for India's independence and with Margaret Sanger to promote birth control; Berlin in early 1923, where she witnessed the upheavals off the early Weimar Republic; Shanghai in the 1930s, where she worked closely with Mao Zedong in the revolution. Price captures neatly and with great nuance the complicated, often contradictory impulses and activities of these political movements. But at the heart of the book is her clear-eyed portrait of the very complicated Smedley, who acted out of humane motives but not always for the best causes. Famous now only for her 1929 feminist novel, Daughter of Earth , Smedley shines here as the prototype of the 20th-century feminist who is driven not only to claim her own personal, sexual, and political freedom but to play it out on the international stage. 30 b&w photos. (Jan.)

Correction: Due to a publisher's error, the agent for True North (Forecasts, Jan. 17) was listed incorrectly. The agent is Paul Bresnick.