The Secret Wars of Judi Bari: A Car Bomb, the Fight for the Redwoods, and the End of Earth First

Rating:
Summary: Propaganda All Is Phony
Review: Check out the publisher. See what else they publish. So if you're a rightwing squid you gave this book 5 stars and use it to support things you already thought. And if you're a leftwinger or environmentalist you hate it. The only real point is that it is based on false information and lies. That's all you need to know. Now, if you need lies to make your point, well here's your book. And if you care about the environment, this book won't help you at all.

Rating:
Summary: compelling!
Review: I felt this was a rich and complete evaluation of the life and struggles of the dedicated environmentalist, Judi Barri.
This book thoughtfully explores the complicated intersection of the personal and political in a wonderfully gripping tale of political activism, passion and crime.

Rating:
Summary: Compelling case for opening the bombing investigation
Review: I read with great interest Kate Coleman's recent book on Judi Bari. The book makes a compelling case for reopening the investigation of the bombing that crippled Bari as well as offers a sympathetic view of the complex and legendary icon that was to become a vicarious diva for many activists. As a person who knew both Bari and especially her former husband, Mike Sweeney, Coleman's book offers insight into both Bari's followers as well as her personal life. The book also poses many questions regarding the role of Bari's former husband, Mike Sweeney,in the bombing of Bari's vehicle that left the radical diva disabled. For those who wish to compare and contrast interpretations of history and political points of view in the interest of good critical thinking, this book is a must.

Dr. Danny Weil, ESQ.
The Critical Thinking Institute

Rating:
Summary: A work of Fiction
Review: I was a close personal friend of Judi Bari's before she was bombed and for over a year after the 1990 bombing. I was very involved and had personal knowledge of much of what author Kate Colemen writes about in her new book. Coleman spent over five hours interviewing me for this book. The interview was taped. Reading Coleman's account, I hardly recognize the people and events she describes and that I discussed with her. Coleman's excuse (that she didn't have time or access to do fact checks) falls short of explaining why she couldn't go back and listen to the tapes. But it is not just the many facts that she gets wrong, rather the whole tone of the book. Clearly, this book is a subjective attack on Judi Bari and the activists she worked with. Judi, like all of us had personal flaws, but that does not justify the total failure to present her objectively in a book that purports to be a serious work of non-fiction. This book, unfortunately, is a work of fiction and does not help us better understand a complex personality who left her mark on the recent history of northern California. However, the book does raise the question of why the much needed serious investigation of the bombing has not occurred.

Anna Marie Stenberg

Rating:
Summary: Hated This Book
Review: I've been interested in Earth First! for a long time, so I got this book right away.  I was immediately struck by some of the extreme statements and allegations about Judi Bari that I'd never seen before, so I did some fact-checking.  It seems like most of the book is just made-up instead of being factual.  Example:  the author's claim that Bari turned her back on forestry activism in favor of working on her FBI lawsuit and playing the role of martyr.  All of us on the North Coast remember Bari's leadership of the huge Save the Headwaters Campaign, which continued until she died of cancer.  And the whole rest of the book is like that.  It's fiction that uses real peoples' names.
 


Rating:
Summary: Blinded by the Left
Review: Kate Coleman addresses an important left-wing Hero with critical thinking and a willingness to address what really happens behind the scenes of any movement. Much like David Brock's book, "Blinded by the Right", this book addresses what happens when any one of us becomes a "True Believer." Protecting our environment from corporations is truly a mind-boggling job and there are no simple paths. The fact that Judi Bari took this path shows her courage and is deserving of great respect. She, like all of us, had blind spots.

In these Bush times it is extremely important to separate reality from political beliefs unless you want to believe that Saddam Hussein is Ossama Bin Laden.

Rating:
Summary: bad fiction
Review: Kate Coleman's "Secret Wars of Judi Bari: A Car Bomb, the Fight for the Redwoods, and the End of Earth First" claims to be a biography, but is so fraught with errors from the title to the final paragraph that it should not even be classified as nonfiction. As Co-Coordinator of the Mendocino Environmental Center, I worked with Judi Bari for ten years, and can personally attest to many of the errors. Ms. Coleman did not interview me; she did not interview members of Judi Bari's family, nor many of her closest associates. Nor, apparently, did Ms. Coleman do any fact checking. Even if Ms. Coleman did not want to interview those closest to Judi Bari, many of the errors could have been avoided by conducting Lexus / Nexus searches or Google searches. Not only are there many documentable errors, the whole tone of the book is derivisive and mean-spirited. Judi Bari's legacy lives on despite the car-bomb attempt on her life, despite losing her battle with the cancer that took her from us far too early - and her legacy will live on despite Kate Coleman's (bad) fictionalized account of her life.

Rating:
Summary: Bad journalism
Review: Kate Coleman's much-anticipated biography of activist Judi Bari is, unfortunately, little more than mean-spirited slander. A new website, colemanhoax.com, enumerates over 350 factual errors in the book, most of which the simplest factchecking would have caught. But truth is not the aim of this book: it is a smear job, written to discredit Bari and her role in the environmental movement. What it ends up discrediting is Kate Coleman and Encounter Books. Read Bari's own work, such as her book Timber Wars, for real information about her life and work.

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating
Review: Kate Coleman's Secret Wars of Judi Bari is an absorbing, informative and even-handed exploration of the intersection of a powerul woman's personality with the environmental movement. I learned so much.

Rating:
Summary: Judi Bari Superstar Loses Her Luster
Review: What does a tired leftist organizer like Judi Bari with a mouldy, cynical, manipulative leftist ideology need to breathe life into an exhausted movement? As we learn in Kate Coleman's evenhanded, penetrating biography, a little bit of nature in the form of North Coast redwoods. The scene changes, but not the tactics.

As she did with the Black Panthers, Coleman shows that Bari, despite her charisma and passion, was ultimately much more interested in martydom/sainthood than actually accomplishing something so mundane as saving trees (or in the case of the Panthers feeding hungry Oakland kids.)

This is a bitter pill to swallow for her followers who prefer to blame their failure of ideas on the FBI. Coleman is sympathetic to the cause when she needs to be, and critical when it is deserved.

In writing this book she has done the ecology movement a great service and should be commended for her courage.