Max Eastman (1883-1969) was a poet, radical editor, translator, and author. He edited the socialist magazine The Masses (1912-1917) and translated Leon Trotsky into English.

Max Forrester Eastman was born on January 4, 1883, the son of two ministers. He graduated from Williams College in 1905 and studied philosophy with John Dewey at Columbia University (1907-1911), where he completed the work for a doctoral degree which he then decided not to claim. In 1909 Eastman founded the Men's League for Women's Suffrage and became a well-known and popular member of the bohemian left in New York City, where his growing reputation as a writer, lecturer, and fund-raiser led to his being invited, in 1912, to become the editor of the socialist magazine The Masses .

Under Eastman's leadership The Masses became an exuberantly anti-establishment left-wing socialist magazine featuring literary and political writing by such figures as Floyd Dell, John Reed, and Louis Untermeyer and...