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Fugitive Days: A Memoir | 
| Author: Bill Ayers
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Category: Book
Buy Used: $74.83
Avg. Customer Rating:  57 reviews
Sales Rank: 284291
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 320
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.5 x 0.7
ISBN: 0142002550
Dewey Decimal Number: 303.6097309047
EAN: 9780142002551
ASIN: 0142002550
Publication Date: January 28, 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: book is in good used condition with minor wear to cover, edges, spine, and pages. no writing great buy!
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Product Description
Bill Ayers was born into privilege and is today a highly respected educator and community activist. In the late 1960s he was a founder of the militant activist group the Weather Underground. Living on the run, stealing explosives, and hiding from the law, Ayers was involved in the defining moments of his generation: the Days of Rage, SDS, the Black Panthers-and the explosion that killed his beloved comrade, Diana Oughton. Fugitive Days tells of these turbulent events, and of the tenacity with which Ayers slowly rebuilt his life after it all came apart. Ayers writes openly about his regrets and what he continues to believe was right. The result is a profoundly honest account of an incendiary chapter in our history.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 52 more reviews...
 informative, but check it out from the library October 13, 2008
I'm intrigued by what a person that commits terrorism might be thinking, particularly if they are still not completely repentant about it. I think that by understanding their thinking, we can better understand how to stop acts of terror. It doesn't help to just close our eyes and pretend that bad things can't happen through just wishing things were different. It's helpful to have people like Ayers write about their experiences, even if we don't agree with them. I also feel that if you aren't comfortable supporting him, you could check this out at the library.
 Please don't buy this book... it funds a killer October 9, 2008
3 out of 6 found this review helpful
It isn't like Bill Ayers is reformed. He still believes in what he did--his age is holding him back from creating more mayhem. He didn't set bombings only on buildings like the book aserts... he made pipe bombs coated with nails (anti-personnel bombs) set in public places to go off during times the building would be occupied. His terror cell killed several police officers in these bombing and a Brinks guard during a robbery. This coward hid in saftey while his girl friend and 2 other cell members were blown up and killed assembling one of his "nail bombs" destined for a Fort Dix dance! He was not convicted of his crimes because the Gov't caught him through illegal wire taps and the case was thrown out due to prosecutorial misconduct. On leaving the court room he said, "I am guilty and free--isn't America great!?" He also hasn't changed... on 9/11/2001 he was interviewed and asked about the bombing and said, "I don't regret setting bombs." On his blog, when asked if he is sorry he states, "I'm sorry--I think." Don't spend your money... he leaves out many details of his crimes stating, "...some details cannot be told." (He can still be sued by the familes of his victims). Please don't buy...
 Memoir of A Sixties Radical With No Regrets April 29, 2008
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
Bill Ayers is frustratingly vague on the specifics, hazy on the details of his life, his motives, and what compelled him to transform himself from an ordinary college student into a radical activist and leader of the Weather Underground, a group that took their protests to violent extremes.
Ayers expresses little regret for his actions, including his part in the bombing of the Pentagon. What few Americans may realize is that the early 1970's, the country was terrorized from within, by daily bomb threats and actual devices that were planted in public places. Ayers dismisses these fears, explaining that the bombs hidden by his group were always revealed in advance by telephone calls placed to the media and also to local police. This doesn't make his crimes any less violent, dangerous and disturbing.
Don't waste a dime buying this book. Check it out from the library or steal it, to paraphrase both Abbie Hoffman and an earlier reviewer of this book.
Ayers and his book provide reasons NOT to vote for Obama April 22, 2008
6 out of 16 found this review helpful
In writing about his life, Ayers attempts to make a "silk purse out of a sow's ear"! He wants his audience to "see" his self-centered, pathetic, useless, violent, criminal life as some sort of heroic journey. Ayers fails.
However, Ayers may succeed in convincing many people that they should NOT vote for Obama to be president. After Ayers got almost $50 million in funds from the Annenberg foundation for a project to try and improve the schools in Chicago, Obama was chosen around 1995 to head the committee that administered the use of the Annenberg funds. Five years later the funds were almost gone and the schools that got the Annenberg funds weren't doing any better than the schools that didn't get the funds. Note: (1) Obama clearly knew and worked with Ayers for several years, even though Obama claims Ayers is just a guy in the neighborhood. (2)As chairman of the committee spending the $50 million, Obama demonstrated that he was incompetent as an agent of successful positive change. The more people learn about Ayers and his relationship with Obama, the less they will consider voting for Obama.
While reading his book, I kept trying to understand why Ayers became a domestic terrorist. I suspect being a middle child of five children he needed to find some way to be noticed, so he became a rebel and did poorly in school while his two older siblings were scholastic stars. His parents finally sent him to a private school, but he continued his "rebel" role. The anti-war movement was a perfect group for Ayers to find drugs, free sex, feelings of power, and a cause to rebel against. Ayers never mentioned considering any non-violent means of protesting, he went straight to using bombs. He also never mentioned considering protesting against any of the most evil and destructive governments in the world, such as Communist China and Communist Russia.
Ayers wrote that the Weatherman always phoned and warned people before they set off bombs. Ayers neglected to mention that his girlfriend's Weathermen cell was responsible for at least two incidents where they INTENDED to harm people with their bombs and did NOT give any phone warning. For example:
His girlfriend's Weathermen group accidentally blew themselves up while making a bomb filled with nails, a bomb that they intended to set off at a non-commissioned officer dance for about 240. Since they added nails to the bomb, it is clear they intended to do as much harm as possible. If they had been successful, they would have killed and wounded many officers and their wives. Luckily they only killed themselves.
The book begins when Ayers starts his fugitive life after he learns that his girlfriend has been blown up. However the book has very little information about Ayer's "fugitive days". Because his focus is not of his "fugitive days", I suspect that Ayer's fugitive days were really easy years of living under his parent's financial support until his father's money paid for lawyers who figured out how to keep Ayers from ever paying for the deaths and destruction for which he, as a leader of the Weathermen, should be held accountable. Then once Ayers didn't have to worry about getting arrested, his father probably paid for him to get a college degree and then used his influence to get Ayers a job.
Only in the America can an unrepentant domestic terrorist like Ayers become a professor and probably try to produce more domestic terrorists. Only in America! I hope Ayers understands just how lucky he is to live in the USA, but I'm afraid he is either too dumb or too brain washed to understand that regardless of the mistakes the USA may have made, the USA is still better than most of the rest of the world. Ayers should check out the book, "Death by Government" to learn about the real evil and cost of communism. Communists were responsible for about 62 millions deaths in Communist China and 35 million deaths in Communist Russia. Yes, it is really too bad Ayers didn't live in either Communist China or Communist Russia when he acting like a terrorist. Either Russia or China would have gotten rid of him quickly.
YOU DO NEED A WEATHERMAN (PERSON) TO KNOW WHICH WAY THE WIND BLOWS-PART II July 3, 2007
4 out of 8 found this review helpful
Recently in this space I reviewed the documentary Weather Underground so that it also makes sense to review the present book by Bill Ayers, one of the `talking heads' in that film and a central leader of both the old Students for a Democratic Society and the Weather Underground that split off from that movement in 1969 to go its own way. Readers should see the documentary as it gives a fairly good presentation of the events around the formation of the Underground, what they tried to accomplish and what happened to them after the demise of the anti-war movement in the early 1970's.
To get a better understanding of what drove thousands of young American students into opposition to the American government at that time the documentary Rebels With A Cause (also reviewed in this space) is worth looking at as well. Between those two sources you will get a better understanding of what drove Professor Ayers and many others, including myself, over the edge. Professor Ayers makes many of those same points in the book. Thus, I only want to make a couple of political comments about the question of the underground here. They were also used in my review of the Weather Underground documentary and apply to Professor Ayers thoughts as well. I would also make it very clear here that unlike many other leftists, who ran for cover, in the 1970's I called for the political defense of the Weather Underground despite my political differences under the old leftist principle that an injury to one is an injury to all. Moreover, and be shocked if you will, the courageous, if misguided, actions of the Weather Underground require no apology today. I stand with the Professor on that count. Here are the comments.
"In a time when I, among others, are questioning where the extra-parliamentary opposition to the Iraq War is going and why it has not made more of an impact on American society it was rather refreshing to view this documentary about the seemingly forgotten Weather Underground that as things got grimmer dramatically epitomized one aspect of opposition to the Vietnam War. If opposition to the Iraq war is the political fight of my old age Vietnam was the fight of my youth and in this film brought back very strong memories of why I fought tooth and nail against it. And the people portrayed in this film, the core of the Weather Underground, while not politically kindred spirits then or now, were certainly on the same page as I was- a no holds- barred fight against the American Empire. We lost that round, and there were reasons for that, but that kind of attitude is what it takes to bring down the monster. But a revolutionary strategy is needed. That is where we parted company.
One of the paradoxical things about the documentary is that the Weather Underground survivors interviewed had only a vague notion about what went wrong. This was clearly detailed in the remarks of Mark Rudd, a central leader, when he stated that the Weathermen were trying to create a communist cadre. He also stated, however, that after going underground he realized that he was out of the loop as far as being politically effective. And that is the point. There is no virtue in underground activity if it is not necessary, romantic as that may be. To the extent that any of us read history in those days it was certainly not about the origins of the Russian revolutionary movement in the 19th century. If we had we would have found that the above-mentioned fight in 1969 (the SDS splits) was also fought out by that movement. Mass action vs. individual acts, heroic or otherwise, of terror. The Weather strategy of acting as the American component of the world-wide revolutionary movement to bring the Empire to its knees certainly had (and still does) have a very appealing quality. However, a moral gesture did not (and will not) bring this beast down. While the Weather Underground was made up a small group of very appealing subjective revolutionaries its political/moral strategy led to a dead end. The lesson to be learned; you most definitely do need weather people to know which way the winds blow. Start with Karl Marx."
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