The New York Times Book Review - Maurice Isserman
What is new and valuable in Days of Rage is the comprehensive overview it provides of the violence perpetrated by would-be revolutionary vanguards from the end of the 1960s through the mid-1980s, including the Weather Underground (initially known as Weatherman), the Black Liberation Army (B.L.A.), the Symbionese Liberation Army (S.L.A.), Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional Puertorriqueña (F.A.L.N.), as well as a host of freelance desperadoes. They left behind a trail of bodies, including both their victims and, sometimes, themselves. And they also left behind shattered movements, ideals and hopes.
Publishers Weekly
02/23/2015
Doggedly pursuing former radicals who’ve never spoken on the record before, Vanity Fair special correspondent Burrough (The Big Rich) delivers an exhaustive history of the mostly ignored period of 1970s domestic terrorism. He explores how middle-class whites joined African-American and Latino youth in turning their disaffection with the U.S. government into an open rebellion against local police and a furious urban bombing campaign, much to the horror of the White House and the FBI. Groups such as Weatherman (which later came to be known colloquially as the Weathermen) focused their activism on conditions facing blacks and managed to bomb high-profile targets including the U.S. Capitol and the Pentagon, but they failed to make inroads with the larger mass of anti-Vietnam protesters. Driven underground, Weatherman and other radicals such as the Black Liberation Army barely survived through the help of family, friends, and other sympathizers until they slowly disappeared from headlines. Female leaders, such as Weathermen’s Bernardine Dohrn and the Black Liberation Army’s Joanne Chesimard (aka Assata Shakur), figure prominently. Patty Hearst’s kidnapping and indoctrination into the Symbionese Liberation Army, one of the era’s more bizarre episodes, is also included. Burroughs’s insights are powerful, though long-winded and repetitive, as he uncovers the “well-meaning if misguided”—and ultimately futile—push to shake up the system by any means necessary. (Apr.)
From the Publisher
Boston Globe:
“Burrough has interviewed dozens of people to compile what is surely the most comprehensive examination of ‘70s-era American"terrorism". . . Burrough, a longtime Vanity Fair correspondent, recalls story after story of astonishing heists, murders, orgies, and wiretaps. Few of his subjects are sympathetic, but all are vividly drawn. He refrains from making moral judgments, which makes the material he presents all the more powerful . . . this book is as likely as a definitive history of Vietnam-era political violence as we are ever likely to get.”
Washington Post:
“[A] rich and important history. . . deep and sweeping. . . . wide-ranging and often revelatory interviews with many Weather alumni.”
LA Times:
“Impressively researched and deeply engrossing."
Seattle Times:
“In “Days of Rage,” Bryan Burrough, author of “Public Enemies,” provides a fascinating look at an almost forgotten era of homegrown"terrorism"#160; . . . . The book is utterly captivating, coupling careful historical research with breathless accounts of the bombings and the perpetrators’ narrow escapes.”
Chicago Tribune:
“Burrough's scholarly pursuit of archival documents and oral histories does not result in an academic tome. Stories are told in a compelling, novelistic fashion, and Burrough doesn't have to stretch to get plenty of sex and violence onto the pages. The descriptions of bloody shootouts and bodies dismembered in bombings are impressively vivid. If you ever wanted to know what it felt like to be at an awkward Weathermen orgy, here's your chance.”
Vanity Fair:
“Days of Rage is bound to alter the conversation about this crucial topic of our time.”
History News Network:
“This is a vivid, engrossing, and far-ranging work that provides a detailed glimpse of a half-dozen underground radical groups in the Vietnam era and its aftermath ...represents a heroic work of reportage...His work on the lesser-known revolutionary groups of the period, such as the Black Liberation Army, is in fact unprecedented; they never have received such detailed and exhaustive treatment. And to the extent that he goes over familiar territory, Burrough does a nice job of demythologizing his subjects. To his credit, the reader gets warts-and-all portraits and not hagiography.”
Publishers Weekly:
“Burroughs’s insights are powerful. . . Doggedly pursuing former radicals who’ve never spoken on the record before,Vanity Fair special correspondent Burrough (The Big Rich) delivers an exhaustive history of the mostly ignored period of 1970s domestic"terrorism"rdquo;
Booklist:
“A fascinating, in-depth look at a tumultuous period of American unrest.”
Kirkus Reviews:
"A stirring history of that bad time, 45-odd years ago, when we didn't need a weatherman to know which way the wind was blowing, though we knew it was loud . . . [DAYS OF RAGE] is thoroughgoing and fascinating . . . A superb chronicle. . . that sheds light on how the war on terror is being waged today."
William D. Cohan, author of House of Cards, Money and Power, and The Price of Silence:
“In spellbinding fashion, Bryan Burrough’s Days of Rage brilliantly explicates one of the most confounding periods of recent American history—the era when a web of home-grown radicals and self-styled anarchists busily plotted the overthrow of the American government. Rarely has such a subject been matched with a writer and reporter of Burrough’s extraordinary skill. I could not put the book down; you won't be able to, either.”
Beverly Gage, Yale University; author of The Day Wall Street Exploded:
“A fascinating portrait of the all-but-forgotten radical underground of the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s. Burroughs gives us the first full picture of a secret world where radical dreams often ended in personal and political tragedy.”
Mark Harris, author of Pictures at a Revolution and Five Came Back:
“Bryan Burrough gives the story of America’s armed underground revolutionaries of the 1960s and 1970s what it has long desperately needed: Clarity, levelheadedness, context, and reportorial rigor. He has sifted the embers of an essential conflagration of the counterculture, found within it a suspenseful and enlightening history, and told it in a way that is blessedly free of cant or point-scoring.”
Paul Ingrassia, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Engines of Change and Crash Course:
“Bryan Burrough has delivered a terrific piece of research, reportage and storytelling. Those who lived through the period of America's radical underground, as I did, will be amazed to learn how much they didn’t.
Library Journal
★ 03/15/2015
Burrough (special correspondent, Vanity Fair; Public Enemies) performs monumental research to tell the tale of underground revolutionaries in the United States between 1970 and 1985. The author is the first to convey the complete story of the six major terrorist groups during those years in one monograph. Interviewing founding and influential members of the Weatherman (later, Weather Underground), the Black Liberation Army, the Symbionese Liberation Army, Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional (FALN), the United Freedom Front, and the Family—as well as FBI agents who pursued these groups—Burrough's narrative provides new and updated information about the actions, participants, outcomes, and punishments meted to these radicals. Included is a "Cast of Characters," which readers will find valuable. Although the stories are told chronologically, this account occasionally reads more like a textbook than a journalistic take owing to its vast number of names, acronyms, and places. However, the concluding bibliography and index provide informative references. VERDICT While Burrough successfully details the history of these groups, the narrative could be too dense for the layperson. Highly recommended for history buffs, readers who remember these times, and students investigating the latter 20th century. [See Prepub Alert, 10/13/14.]—Jason L. Steagall, Gateway Technical Coll., Elkhorn Lib., WI
JULY 2015 - AudioFile
This audiobook has a lot of detail on a phase of recent U.S. history of great interest to many people and is generally well narrated by Ray Porter. But, annoyingly, accurate pronunciation of place names was not a priority, and careless production left the mistakes. Maine’s “Calais” is not France’s “Calais.” To be fair, such jarring notes are few, and Porter does manage to convey tension and excitement as needed. And it often is, for this is a book about deluded violence. D.R.W. © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2015-02-04
A stirring history of that bad time, 45-odd years ago, when we didn't need a weatherman to know which way the wind was blowing, though we knew it was loud.The 1970s, writes Vanity Fair special correspondent Burrough (The Big Rich: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Texas Oil Fortunes, 2009, etc.), saw something unknown since the American Revolution: a group of radical leftists forming "an underground resistance movement" that, as his subtitle notes, is all but forgotten today. The statistics are daunting and astonishing: In 1971 and 1972, the FBI recorded more than 2,500 bombings, only 1 percent of which led to a fatality. In contrast to the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995, which killed 168 people, the "single deadliest radical-underground attack of the decade killed four people." The FBI, of course, took this very seriously. As Burrough records, it embarked on a campaign of infiltration and interdiction that soon overstepped its bounds, legally speaking. The author takes a deep look into this history on both sides, interviewing veterans of the underground on one hand and of the FBI on the other. He traces the bombing campaign back to the man he deems a "kind of Patient Zero for the underground groups of the 1970s," who began seeding Manhattan with bombs in the year of Woodstock and provided a blueprint for radicals right and left ever since. It is clear that the FBI has Burrough's sympathy; after all, many of those who went underground got off lightly, while overly zealous federal agents (the man who would later be unmasked as Watergate's Deep Throat among them) were prosecuted. The author's history is thoroughgoing and fascinating, though with a couple of curious notes—e.g., the likening of the Weathermen et al. to the Nazi Werewolf guerrillas "who briefly attempted to resist Allied forces after the end of World War II." A superb chronicle, long—but no longer than needed—and detailed, that sheds light on how the war on terror is being waged today.
