Fugitive Days: A Memoir by Bill Ayers Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Fugitive Days: A Memoir
Book Review: An Obscene Self-Justification
Summary: 1 Stars
Everything that is destructive to the civic culture of this country is exemplified by this morally obtuse piece of self-indulgence. Here is a man born to privilege who in his youth advocated terrorism as a means of achieving social change (for what ends does not seem to have been clear even to him)and who wrote of the radical anti-American Weather Underground: "I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough." Well, has enough been done for him now, with the murder of the more than six thousand innocent men and women on September 11? "Bring the revolution home," he advised the young. "Kill your parents, that's where it's really at." The man is beneath contempt, but even worse is the stupidity of the publishers and media reviewers who take him seriously and still worse is the mindlessly corrupt "education" system that makes him a "distinguished professor" in a position to influence others too young to have learned history or experienced life. The book is sickening in its hypocrisy and should be read only as an example of the kind of arrogant fanaticism that undertakes to bring the world into alignment with one's own utopian ideas by any means no matter how violent and how destructive. The man who wrote it should have the grace to be embarrassed and to keep quiet.Book Review: An Unrepentant Terrorist Earns Royalties
Summary: 1 Stars
Unlike a previous poster, I am not a conservative. I am a liberal. Nevertheless, I found this self-serving awkwardly "literary" memoir to be highly repugnant. Ayers, an unrepentant domestic terrorist who by his actions helped spawn a wave of bombings, armed robberies, and other terrorist acts that lasted into the 1980s and resulted in numerous deaths, spends half his time avoiding unpleasant truths and the other half attempting to weave a clumsily poetic romanticized version of the 60s and the counterculture.The Weather Underground was a terrorist organization and many of its members--at least those who did not kill themselves while making bombs--still deserve to be in jail. Ayers and his wife and fellow terrorist largely escaped the consequences of their illegal and immoral actions, and now he apparently will turn them to profit with this book.
If you have to read this book, if you absolutely have to, let me borrow from Abbie Hoffman and urge you to steal rather than buy it.
Book Review: An unbelievable memoir!
Summary: 5 Stars
Thank god this book has finally come along. With most treatments of the sixties these days filled with either chest-thumping patriotic indignation or warm and fuzzy hippy love, Ayers' new memoir is a welcome breath of fresh air. He tells the story of a truly American journey -- from the upper crust society of Glen Ellyn, Illinois to running from the FBI as a member of the radical Weathermen anti-war group -- with skill, humor, and a healthy dose of irony. It brings the decade alive. This is the best American memoir I have ever read. Great storytelling and a sense of moral outrage that burns off the page. Five stars!Book Review: Ayers Reality
Summary: 1 Stars
"Ayers ends his book without even acknowledging that after the group broke up, several of its most important cadre - including the former lower level leader Kathy Boudin - ended up joining in terrorist actions in support of the ultra violent so-called Black Liberation Army. Boudin ended up in prison for life for her role in the 1981 Brinks robbery and murder, in which her comrades killed a black cop. The Weather Underground broke apart in a 1930s-style Communist purge, as old hard-line Stalinists Ayers and Dohrn had recruited took the group over, purging many for various deviations. Indeed, Dohrn and Ayers themselves were put on trial for promoting "crimes against national liberation struggles, women and the anti-imperialist left." Like the old Stalinists, they readily confessed to their crimes before the new Central Committee, of which Dohrn had taken Stalin's title as General Secretary.Many of them then joined the new May 19th Communist organization, which became a support group for the terrorist Black Liberation Army, the group which pulled off the Brinks robbery and murder with Boudin and Gilbert's participation. With these two in prison for life, Ayers and Dohrn agreed to raise Boudin and Gilbert's child as their own. Yet the actions of Boudin and Gilbert, who followed through on the logic and policy of Ayers' beloved Weathermen, are somehow not discussed. After all, Ayers admits that he sent support messages to the BLA, and let them know they "agreed" with them. Does not this make himself and Dohrn also responsible for their acts of murder?"
Book Review: Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn are American heroes.
Summary: 5 Stars
Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn are American heroes.
Unlike most people that sit around idly & whine about corrupt politicians, unfair work environments, and the total lack of justice in the courts, the Weathermen at least did *something*. Perhaps, at times, their actions were misguided, but the fact that they made the effort shows their character. They are not terrorists. They are heroes. Their targets were carefully selected & minimized loss of life -- unlike police around the country that deliberately and systematically murdered individuals such as Fred Hampton & many others.
As Ayers himself has said, you can't take someone's actions out of the context in which they occurred. Look at what was going on at the time: young people were being drafted & forced to fight in an immoral war for profit. The country was run by liars and criminals -- first LBJ, and then Nixon. Then, as now, corporations became filthy rich by robbing the People, all with the knowledge and assistance of the politicians, our supposed benefactors. And, as with now, there were no real civil rights.
Conditions now are identical, if not worse than they were in the '60s/'70s. In fact, the political climate today is identical to that which sparked the original American revolutionary war. There is no taxation with representation. Just try to get your Congressman on the phone. He's too busy or important? Listening to you is his *job*. Peacefully assembly, a Constitutional right, will get you beaten up & thrown in jail -- by thugs whose salary YOU pay, no less. We live in a time when a complete imbecile, backed by family connections, can steal the Presidency. Finally, the People of Missouri chose to vote for a dead man over John Ashcroft, who, installed as Attorney General, tramps all over the Constitution -- the basis for all our laws and, indeed, our country itself.
Ayers and Dohrn are more like the patriots and Founding Fathers than today's "sanctioned" crop of George the 3rds. Perhaps the sheeple don't like the Weathermen because the Man on TeeVee didn't say they were "ok". Maybe people are stupid.
Since virtually every reviewer has rated this book not on its own merits, but on their opinion of the author, I will follow course and give five stars.