Riding on the Edge: A Motorcycle Outlaw's Tale

Riding on the Edge: A Motorcycle Outlaw's Tale
by John Hall

Riding on the Edge: A Motorcycle Outlaw's Tale
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Book Summary Information

Author: John Hall
Edition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2008-09-12
ISBN: 0760332762
Number of pages: 304
Publisher: Motorbooks

Book Reviews of Riding on the Edge: A Motorcycle Outlaw's Tale

Book Review: Yet another OMC Memoir.
Summary: 5 Stars

I think I've read just about every book written about OMC's (Outlaw Motorcycle Clubs.) The books tend to fall into two genres: memoirs from aging 1%'ers (Sonny Barger's Hell's Angel: The Life and Times of Sonny Barger and Ruben 'Doc' Cavazo's Honor Few, Fear None) and cops who managed to infiltrate the hyper-paranoid world of outlaw bikers (Jay Dobyns' No Angel and Billy McQueen's Under and Alone)

What strikes me in all of these (theoretically) true accounts is how proud the bikers are of their lifestyle beyond the social norms and how the cops admit that they're envious of the freedom that these outlaws demand.

John Hall's book is somewhere in between. It's a recount of his life in the 1960's when, as a young twenty-something, he rode with the east-coast Pagans, eventualy rising to rank of Chapter President of the Long Island Pagans. In between riding with the Pagans and writing this book, he spent "time in the state pen, as well as Penn State, where he taught history, American studies, rhetoric and mathematics." John's obviously not your average outaw biker.

The bulk of the story is set in the 60's when OMC's were a gathering of guys who liked to ride motorcycles, drink beer, engage in the occasional fisticuffs, and bed the women who found their anti-social antics a turn-on.

John has a great way with words and he paints a vivid mental image of what he's describing. He also acknowledges how times have changed: "Today there are probably hundreds of normal middle-class Long Island kids who would s*** if they found out that back when grandma was their age, she used to h*** Pagans on the cellar floor in East Meadows."

John's book is set in the time before OMC's (allegedly) became a major criminal enterprise. Growing up in Fontana, I spent a lot of time in the company of Hells Angels, who were friends of my Dad. John's book captures that feeling that they were just guys who chose to live a different way.

Summary of Riding on the Edge: A Motorcycle Outlaw's Tale

Ride with author John Hall into the turbulent world of 1960s bike club culture, from the time he joined an upstart motorcycle club from Dixie, and rose to become Long Island chapter president of the Pagans, a club that the FBI called "the most violent criminal organization in America." Follow him into the Pagan heartland of Pennsylvania where he fell in love, got in a roadhouse brawl over a honky-tonk angel, and eventually went to jail for "takin' care a club business." Now after a career as a journalist and college professor, he returns to the violent days of his youth and smashes up stereotypes like he once smashed up bars, resurrecting long-dead brothers, in a style reminiscent of Jack Kerouac and Mark Twain.  Hall presents them as they really were: hard living, hard loving, hard drinking, hard fighting rebels, but also hardworking, patriotic, loyal, and lovable characters, and a band of brothers whose outlandish behavior forged an all-American outlaw legend in the tradition of Jesse James, Doc Holliday, John Dillinger, and Pretty Boy Floyd.  Outlaws yes, but outlaws as American as apple pie.

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