Rating: 
Summary: Scary babblings
Review: This book is a chilling read for anyone in post-Sept. 11, 2001 America and for those who lived through the turbulent 60s, 70s and remembers the psychotic antics of the Underground Weathermen. Bill Ayers fondly recalls those wondrous days of blowing up the Pentagon, trying to murder and blow up the "pigs" and other innocents who didn't share his beliefs or those of his fellow pychos. Ayers and his ilk came from wealthy, white-bread families and this was a chance for them to dramatize their poor, boring lives by pretending to be social outlaws. Protected by money and other kindred rich and air-headed brats, the Underground zanies created their own theatrical reality--where they were bravely trying to destroy the "white man's" society and liberate all those poor little welfare people. Ayers rationalizes this behavior by centering his theme on the trauma of the Vietnam war. He justifies his eager and nutty attempts to murder and maim innocent Americans by inner rage at America and the War. Millions of others were also frustrated by many issues in those days but they didn't attempt to blow up and destroy symbols and people. What's scary is that Bill Ayers is now a Distinguished Professor at the University of Illinois. His fellow former terrorist, Bernardine Dorn, is now his wife. What a couple! What they tried to do back in their glory days was accomplished by terrorists Sept. 11, 2001. To paraphrase an old New York saying, "only in America, kids. Only in America."
Rating: 
Summary: Bring the war home
Review: Many people around the world have sacrificed for a better world, and Bill Ayers was one of those people who did what he could from his position, in his time. He gives us an account of his life and times, and milieu.I appreciated some of the things I noticed - he doesn't really talk about how he was an SDS leader or note how this or that person was a leader, everyone is considered on an equal basis. He talks in one section about a black woman who is a good leader in her community, and how government social workers going down their lists would probably classify, in their books, as a general failure as a person. The book is a good mixture of personal and political, of confrontation with authority as well as building community and giving to the community, in poor American neighborhoods or in Guatemala. It is from the point of view of someone who grew up in a normal, middle class, Midwestern family during the 1950's, but even that would be too dangerous to hear on the corporate media, so one would have to read the book to get an idea of the world view that many people in the country and world share.
Rating: 
Summary: A little thin
Review: That this thing ever found a publisher is disgusting. Mr. Ayres is utterly incapable of realizing or telling the truth about his grotesque and violent ideas or passage through life. Lies about his history and motives whenever it suits his purposes to do so. Avoid this package of lies and inadequate justifications at all costs.
Rating: 
Summary: fight the real enemy
Review: The book starts with a disclaimer that it "feels true enough," so immediately the veracity of Ayers' account is in question. What is he omitting? Is this a definitive account or a self-justification? I always have a problem with self-indulgent writing and over-long childhood recounting. This book has both, not to mention italicized asides that add nothing to the narrative. Certain passages of the book are fascinating (the underground, Days of Rage), but the rest is mostly dull. Ayers rhapsodizes about those things he is passionate about, mostly his hope for a North Vietnamese victory, his hatred of American arrogance and oppression (as he sees it), and getting laid. I found his style ponderous, and his sketchy recounting of events frustrating. He had an opportunity to breathe life in an important and fascinating period of our country, and, perhaps because he was too close to the action, didn't quite deliver. I lost interest well before the book ended.
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