Lev Davidovich Trotsky burst onto the world stage in November 1917 as co–leader of a Marxist Revolution seizing power in Russia. It made him one of the most recognized personalities of the twentieth century, a global icon of radical change. Yet just months earlier, this same Lev Trotsky was a nobody, a refugee expelled from Europe, writing obscure pamphlets and speeches, barely noticed outside a small circle of fellow travelers. Where had he come from to topple Russia and change the world? Where else? New York City.
