Rating: 
Summary: If your on the left, read this book!
Review: I'm a 23 year old college student who has recently become very interested in politics. Although I know where I stand on most issues and am definitely more aligned with conservative viewpoints rather than liberal, I don't know enough about the history of the politics of the left to really take a strong stand in political conversations. After reading this book, I feel I can hold my own in any conversation with a liberal.This book is so many things: 1) A touching story of a family through several generations, filled with love, regret, and honesty. 2) A history lesson on the beliefs and deeds of the left wing throughout the sixties and seventies. Also a history of the McCarthy era and the communists of his parent's generation. 3) A story of honest and thought out change from a radical left-winger to a conscientious conservative. I learned so much from this book. My tentative beliefs have been strengthened and reaffirmed by this honest and thorough account. This book also scared me a little. I knew the left wing was dangerous in the way that political correctness has stifled free speech in this country, but I had no idea the lengths that they go to silence any opposition. I have several liberal members of my family that I will recommend this book to. I wish that every young left-winger could read this book. They think that to be compassionate and a good person you have to be a liberal. This book shows that almost exactly the opposite is true. David Horowitz has a new fan in me and I hope that he keeps up the "unpopular" talk, because no matter what the left says, there are lots of us who want to hear it, and EVERYONE needs to hear it.
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Summary: Outstanding analysis of worldviews w amazing theological par
Review: As a theologian (I am the author of Confident in Christ), I found amazing parallels between the leftist ideals and biblical ideals. Both envision a world to come which will be free of evil. However, each starts from a different viewpoint as to whether people are inherently good or evil. Having started college in 1970, the year after the strikes of 1969, and having gone to one of the University of California campuses (Irvine), I found his comments right on the money. His comments on the Black Panther Party were eye opening to me. I highly recommend this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Brought back memories
Review: Radical Son is a well written and honest book. It brought back memories of the late 60's when I was in college. Although I was a Goldwaterite and Ayn Randite then (and continue to be), I can never forget how the campuses were torn with strife and rebellion. How can anyone read Mr. Horowitz's sad account of his third (and very turbulent) marriage and doubt his honesty? I felt I was intruding upon his personal life, but was also faced with the fact that he wanted to share it with me. It fills me with relief that so many of the New Left have now had time to reflect and picked up books by Hayek and von Mises. Like Mr. Horowitz, they have been able to shed their illusions.
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Summary: crude, maudlin, but interesting and not "extremist"
Review: The main value of the book is its exposure of visible political figures as unrepentant New Leftists (Robert Scheer, Ira Magaziner, Sid Blumenthal, Tom Hayden) and its meticulous cataloging of their endless trail of boulderdash illustrating how little they have learned and how totally they have managed to escape accountability of any sort.
His accounts of his early life are moving, but he becomes tiresome when he moves onto his later years, as well as self-absorbed, sentimental, and defensive.
By the bye, any scrupulous writer should be wary of using the words "extremist" and "controversial" to denote all viewpoints that they find personally dissagreeable. This is the only possible working definition of "extremist" that would justify the view that Horowitz is as "extreme" now as in his youth, and has merely changed sides. Horowitz is now devoted to the democratic process, social (read "racial") equality under law, Constitutional law, and the American old liberal tradition. In contrast, he was in the 60's a violent revolutionary, bent on subverting the democratic process and imposing a radical and foreign political system upon an unwilling populace. Horowitz may be as crude, as loud, and as tactless as ever, but to claim that his stances then and now are similarly severe is to undermine the seriousness of extremism, which generally denotes advocacy of social destabalization, resentiment, and political revolution. Horowitz can be obnoxious enough to give his enemies plenty of ammunition without them having to resort to such obvious smear tactics.
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Summary: A Must Read for YOUNG Leftists and Socialists
Review: "Radical Son" is a very interesting book. The author's parents were life-long Communists and he was a New Leftist/Socialist for the first 40 years of his life. Slowly he was forced to admit to himself the nihilism of socialism. The murder of a friend by the Blank Panthers crystallized his thinking. If only this book could be read by high school students and again when they attend college, there might be some hope of ending the untrue and dangerous myths of socialism perpetuated by left-wing politicians, the mainstream media and college elites. Horowitz states, "It was what I thought was the humanity of the Marxist idea that made me what I was then; it is the inhumanity of what I have seen to be the Marxist reality that has made me what I am now. . . . The lesson I had learned from my pain turned out to be modest and simple: the best intentions can lead to the worst deeds. I had believed in the Left because of the good it had promised; I had learned to judge it by the evil it had done." (...)
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Summary: Extraordinary... educational as well as highly entertaining
Review: (...) Radical Son is much more than an autobiography. It is a first-hand chronicle of the roots of the modern progressive movement, from one of the people who helped create it. His fascinating account of his parents in a communist cell in 1940’s New York will keep the thoughtful reader spellbound, and his insider account of the radical movement in sixties Berkeley is fascinating, enlightening, and highly entertaining. From Paul Robeson to Tom Hayden, from Bertrand Russell to Huey Newton and Eldridge Cleaver, many of the famous, almost fabulous, names that have come to represent the sixties radical culture appear in this book, stripped of their half-mythical trappings and presented as the often deeply flawed people they really were. Read this book. You’ll learn a lot that you didn’t know before, and you’ll enjoy the ride.
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Summary: Good insights on where the Left is coming from...
Review: This book gives you incredible insights into the radical left from someone who clearly knows the left-of-center mindset. I did think the book was a bit tedious at times. It probably could've been just as effective with 100 fewer pages. Nevertheless, Radical Son is well worth your time. It should be required reading for anyone who wears the label of conservative or libertarian.
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Summary: Both Sides Now
Review: David Horowitz makes a lot of people angry, and it's understandable: He has lived on the extremes of two opposing political movements, the New Left of the 1960s and the New Right of the 1980s. Here, Horowitz tells the story of his red-diaper youth and his years in the socialist and Black Panther movements, and the murder that led him to reevaluate his politics. While Horowitz is a sparkling writer and entertains throughout, the narrative has two major flaws. The first is Horowitz's stubborn and juvenile refusal to take responsibility for his own actions -- hardly an attitude befitting a conservative! He justifies each radical swing of his life by blaming his peers and the times, never himself. Second, and related, is the emotionalism of his politics. Horowitz seems to have swung far right after coming to loathe the far left, but fails to justify his new politics as anything other than quite literally reactionary.
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Summary: Take me to the river, rock me on the water
Review: Radical Son is about David Horowitz and the story of his life and his personal travails. What separates his from other American stories is that he was born, and spent the formative years of his life, believing in an Anti-American ideology that has brought more misery to mankind than any other in history. He catalogues his early years as a red diaper baby in Queens NY, one where his family wholeheartedly supported Lenin, Stalin and the rest of the Bolshevik Russian revolutionaries. His parents followed the party line in supporting Stalin during the Spanish Revolution and turned on Trotsky when the party line dictated such. His people, like those of Ron Radosh, and Sidney Hook, were dedicated Communists in every way. For Horowitz to repudiate this intense indoctrination, which he tells of doing in this book, required him to totally change his worldview and within it the way he saw himself. This is about the hardest thing a human can do. If his book has elements of the soap opera angst it isn't difficult to understand. A small percentage of people, I'll guess 15% or fewer, can look at themselves differently and change their viewpoint, as Horowitz has done. The viciousness of the attacks on him, by former friends, since publication of "Radical Son", are inversely proportionate to the fear these former comrades feel with regard to their own intellectual contradictions with which they've been loathe to deal. Others who have made the transition from Marxism to acceptance of the validity of free market solutions such as Radosh, Thomas Sowell, the Krystol's, the Himmelfarb's, the Milton Friedman's, Hayek, Schumpeter, etc have also suffered the wrath of their former Communist-American allies.. Horowitz's visceral turning point, in the book, is when his friend, Betty Van Patter, is killed by the Black Panthers. Horowitz had brought her in to help these "Vanguard's of the Revolution" only to discover that they were nothing more than street thugs who had been glorified by the Tom Hayden-Jane Fonda Left. Horowitz had the courage to reexamine his assumptions and because of it was able to think critically about his former belief system. This book provides the reader with a front row view of this transition. The smears against Horowitz remind me of the hate ad's run by the Unions against Newt Gingrich, which numbered over 120,000; he was the leader, they had to bring him down. Horowitz was such a leader in the New Left that he had to be discredited at all costs, but he has been an elusive target. He has continued to expose the lies and hypocrisy of the Left on the college campus, and in the media. He's relentless as he makes them focus on the facts and not his personality or presumed motives. It's a marvelous thing as Horowitz catches the squirming of hypocritical faculty members preaching the original values of the university while disseminating the worst of Marxist-Leninist culture-smog to their students. The facts are on his side and he will win the fight. He's a great intellectual and an insightful writer. Read all of his books and you will then know the enemy as he does. He has sent another of his books, 'the Art of Political War', to all congressional Republicans and he was an advisor to George W. Bush in the last election. He continues to send a daily advisory to these political leaders and as such is making a huge contribution to getting the country back to the value systems that have made it the most prosperous land in the world for the common man. It's interesting to me that it takes so little investment in time and money to believe in Leftist values. To actually learn what has made America exceptional requires a considerable amount of study and reflection. Horowitz has certainly done this and I predict that he will go down in history as one of the significant thinkers and writers of the 20th century. For another view at what Horowitz is about read "America's 30 Years War; Who's Winning" by Balint Vazsonyi. It will help you understand the importance of this struggle that Horowitz has undertaken.
Rating:
Summary: Leftist Beware
Review: An excellent author who describes his complete 180 degree turnaround in political beliefs with great detail. Horowitz is unafraid to confront even the most sacred of liberal philosophy and this book is an excellent insight into where he came from and where he is now. A good read.
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