amydelong's review
3.0
This book made me think about memories in an entirely new way. What is real? Memories in themselves are a form of reality: a mix of emotions, thoughts, rationalizations. I have a big case of 60s and 70s envy and this book added a huge bucket of kerosene to the fire. I finished feeling happy to be young and alive. I read it during the election when all the b.s. about Ayers was going around. In that regard, it was enlightening only because I'd never really heard of the guy before. The book doesn't really delve into all the details however if you are looking for an accurate or journalistic-style account of the weather underground. I was satisfied with Ayers take on memories and the struggle inherit in being young and lost in a tumultuous time.
depreydeprey's review
4.0
It was darn fun to read a book that's very existence pissed conservatives off. While by no means a classic it is a fascinating look at an interesting time in our history and an enlightening look at who the Weathermen were and how totally full of shit the right are to compare their actions to anything resembling terrorism.
stewarthome's review
1.0
Bill Ayers is a reactionary elitist tosser and his memoirs read like unconvincing fiction. Ayers claims the Weather Underground weren't terrorists but fails to build any kind of convincing argument to back up this assertion. He talks about students and intellectuals joining the working class (as leaders and educators of course!) as if you could join a social class in the same way that you can join a gym or college fraternity. He uses Stalinist terminology like 'good middle cadre' to describe fellow members of the Weather Underground, and has an unhealthy fixation with turning his dead girlfriend - the over-privileged and utterly repulsive Diana Oughton - into a Stalinist icon along the lines of 'Chairman Mao' or 'Uncle Ho' simply because she got herself blown up in a Weather Underground bomb factory.
Ayers constructs a completely ridiculous and unconvincing argument to justify his and his various girlfriends' vanguardist and adventurist activities. In short this amounts to the absurd claim that the only effective way to oppose the war in Vietnam was to carry out the bombings the Weather Underground undertook; which is stuff and nonsense because there were in reality many ways in which that war could be and was opposed. While the US military and government was overwhelmingly more successful in its terrorism than the Weather Underground, it was luck rather than judgement that led to three of it's cadre dying in its most spectacular botch job (the Greenwich Village townhouse bomb factory explosion), rather than ordinary members of the working class.
To sum up, Ayers is a right-wing scumbag and a really bad prose writer to boot! "The emancipation of the working class is the task of the workers themselves" - so twits with the bourgeois mindset so sordidly displayed in Ayer's memoirs can fuck right off, especially since they always present themselves as better than the rest of us and want to be our leaders! Anyone who understands that revolutionary activity aims to abolish alienation (and thus any division of labour) will simultaneously grasp the need to oppose all forms of leadership and specialisation. What we seek is the movement of vast majorities, and this necessarily entails opposing vanguardists like Ayers who are deluded enough to believe they can act as a divine spark bringing life to what they obnoxiously view as the dead matter of the inert masses.
Ayers constructs a completely ridiculous and unconvincing argument to justify his and his various girlfriends' vanguardist and adventurist activities. In short this amounts to the absurd claim that the only effective way to oppose the war in Vietnam was to carry out the bombings the Weather Underground undertook; which is stuff and nonsense because there were in reality many ways in which that war could be and was opposed. While the US military and government was overwhelmingly more successful in its terrorism than the Weather Underground, it was luck rather than judgement that led to three of it's cadre dying in its most spectacular botch job (the Greenwich Village townhouse bomb factory explosion), rather than ordinary members of the working class.
To sum up, Ayers is a right-wing scumbag and a really bad prose writer to boot! "The emancipation of the working class is the task of the workers themselves" - so twits with the bourgeois mindset so sordidly displayed in Ayer's memoirs can fuck right off, especially since they always present themselves as better than the rest of us and want to be our leaders! Anyone who understands that revolutionary activity aims to abolish alienation (and thus any division of labour) will simultaneously grasp the need to oppose all forms of leadership and specialisation. What we seek is the movement of vast majorities, and this necessarily entails opposing vanguardists like Ayers who are deluded enough to believe they can act as a divine spark bringing life to what they obnoxiously view as the dead matter of the inert masses.
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