Fugitive Days: A Memoir by Bill Ayers
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Book Reviews of Fugitive Days: A Memoir
Book Review: Pitiful Self-Justification For Violence
Summary: 1 Stars
Bill Ayers is not a revolutionary. He is a coward with virtually no leadership skills. A true leader (who wants to make positive social change)reaches out to develop relationships with those they oppose. Once you develop these relationships, you then have the power to influence them for the greater good (of society). In the Art of War, the philosophical writer believes that the greatest tool a leader has to build a strong army is to bring those with opposing viewpoints together for understanding. Put in another way, when you can have simultaneous understanding between those with opposed viewpoints, you have the greatest tool for building a strong army (social change). Bill Ayers never reached out to those he opposed. Instead, he went "underground" and blew up empty buildings which caused the American taxpayers even more suffering. The fact that he got away with his crimes makes it more disheartening for those of us who continue to work hard and believe in the rule of law. His book is rubbish and belongs next to other titles written by ego-maniacs.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: I've rarely had such a (bad) reaction to a book
Summary: 1 Stars
Rarely do I have such a reaction to a book as I've had towards this one. Being someone who opposed the Vietnam War, my expectations were that it would be an enjoyable read - not a book I'd come to loathe.Bill Ayers does a good job of taking his readers back to the chaos of that time in the early chapters of his book. And I congratulate him on his unswerving honesty towards himself and his cadre of comrades. But he is such detestable, manipulative, whiny, self-righteous holier-than-thou person that I suddenly see a lot more legitimacy in the words, "Love it or leave it."
I completely lost tolerance for him at the end when he brings up My Lai yet another time in the book and then asks when America will acknowledge the sacrifice Diana made toward ending the war - Diana who blew herself up or was blown up by another in their gang while planning to bomb a target in the US.
I wish I could rate this book zero stars. I wish I could get my money back.
Book Review: Weathermen continue under cover
Summary: 1 Stars
Fugitive DaysThe new looks of Radical Weathermen are as "Distinguished Professors" and Legal Clinic Directors. Ayers makes the limp excuse after the WTC bombing that "..we are witnessing crimes against humanity" to distinguish his and Dohrn's actions from those of later day bombers. Isn't that what his bombings of police stations, the Pentagon, and Capitol building represented? Were these lives less important to their families? One thing we've learned in the last few days is that people can blend into our society and then resurface as terrorists. How do we know that Ayers and Dohrn aren't waiting for their next destructive opportunities, and certainly use their positions of trust to do further damage to society?
The University of Illinois and Northwestern University should reexamine their standards for those who can corrupt the minds of our young people.
Book Review: Drinking His Own Bathwater
Summary: 1 Stars
This might well have been a wonderful satire under a pen named assumed by P. J. O'Rourke. But it is not quite clever enough for that. Rather this "memoir" of the 60s, 70s, and 80s comes from someone who is "still rad". One might only conclude from this sorry compilation of mendacity that Ayers has spent 50 years drinking too much of his own bathwater and taking too little Prozac. Having inflicted bombs and bombastic rhetoric on American culture and politics, this work is, hopefully, the final bomb from someone whose political philosophy was outdated and shopworn and wicked from the very day he embraced it. Get out the turkey baster, Mr. Ayers, pump in the prozac and drop that keyboard!