Fugitive Days: Memoirs of an Antiwar Activist

Description

Bill Ayers was born in privilege, and is today a highly respected educator and community activist. For ten years, he lived as a fugitive, stealing explosives, planting bombs, hiding from the law. The story of how a young pacifist-a preschool teacher, no less-came to help found one of the most radical political organizations in US history is told here with amazing candor and immediacy. It offers an eyewitness account of these defining events of the 60s: Detroit Riots, Chicago Democratic Convention of 1968, The Days of Rage, Founding of the Weathermen, murder of Fred Hampton (Black Panthers), townhouse explosion in Greenwich Village that killed Diane Oughton and others, break-out of Timothy Leary from jail, bombing of Pentagon and US Capitol.

Bill Ayers is the author of the acclaimed and controversial memoir Fugitive Days, its follow up Public Enemy, and many books on education, including To Teach, Teaching Toward Freedom, and A Kind and Just Parent. He is the founder of the Small Schools Workshop and was, until his retirement, Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He lives in Hyde Park, Chicago.

[Ayers's] memoir is a breath of fresh air in this self-absorbed age. Ayers discusses his reservations about the use of violence to achieve an end to violence (reservations he held then as well), but he is unrepentant in believing that . . . right-minded people have an obligation to resist unjust wars. . . . There are many lessons still to be learned from such narratives. Recommended.-David Keymer, Library Journal "[A] gripping and provocative story . . . What is most remarkable about this dramatic and revelatory personal and social history are the always urgent questions it raises about compassion and freedom, responsibility and community, and the conundrum of how to bring about much-needed change."-Booklist, starred review "A challenging, moving, and troubling account . . . Ayers writes well, lyrically, passionately."-Andrea Behr, San Francisco Chronicle "A memoir that is, in effect, a deeply moving elegy to all those young dreamers who tried to live decently in an indecent world. Ayers provides a tribute to those better angels of ourselves."-Studs Terkel, author of Working and The Good War "With considerable wit, no small amount of remorse, and an anger that smolders still across the decades, Bill Ayers tells the story of his quintessentially American trip through the 1960s. That it is written in a consistently absorbing style with many passages of undiluted brilliance only adds to its appeal.-Thomas Frank, author of One Market Under God and What's the Matter with Kansas? "A gripping account . . . Ayers describes well the deep emotions that inflamed the '60s."-John Patrick Diggins, Los Angeles Times "This is a precious book, not simply because it offers a gripping personal account of the primal American suspense story of life on the run, but, more important, because it recreates a critical point of view and way of thinking that we seem, even a few decades later, barely able to recall."-Scott Turow, author of Ordinary Heroes and Ultimate Punishment "It's been a long time since American political culture last leftward . . . Extremists of the left have all but disappeared, while extremists of the right are as common as mushrooms after rain . . . Ayers has a knack for capturing the spirit of his times . . . It's a fascinating story."-Jean Dubail, Cleveland Plain Dealer "Finally, here is an irresistibly readable book that answers the question, How did a nice suburban boy go from the ordinary pleasures of his class to the Days of Rage and beyond? Bill Ayers not only makes this exalting and painful journey comprehensible, he peoples it with sympathetic family, friends, and lovers, and moves us with his candor."-Rosellen Brown, author of Before and After and Half a Heart "Terrific . . . This memoir rings of hard-learned truth and integrity and is an important contribution to literature on 1960s culture and American radicalism."-Publishers Weekly "What makes Fugitive Days unique is its unsparing detail and its marvelous human coherence and integrity. Bill Ayers's America and his family background, his education, his political awakening, his anger and involvement, his anguished re-emergence from the shadows: all these are rendered in their truth without a trace of nostalgia or 'second thinking.' For anyone who cares about the sorry mess we are in, this book is essential, indeed necessary, reading."-Edward W. Said, author of Reflections on Exile and Out of Place "This remarkable memoir gives us the visceral experience of being on the run. Ayers writes with eloquence and irony. This is one man's amazingly honest, authentic, and gripping testament-and a helluva story it makes."-Phillip Lopate, author of Portrait of My Body "A wild and painful ride in the savage years of the late sixties. A very good book about a terrifying time in America."-Hunter S. Thompson, author of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Hell's Angels "For anyone who wants to think hard about the social conflagration the Vietnam War produced in the U.S., and more generally about a citizen's obligations in troubled times, Ayers's powerful, morally charged account of a life and a society in the political balance is provocative reading."-David Farber, Chicago Tribune