Bill Ayers is the author of the acclaimed and controversial memoir Fugitive Days, its follow up Public Enemy, and many books on education, including To Teach, Teaching Toward Freedom, and A Kind and Just Parent. He is the founder of the Small Schools Workshop and was, until his retirement, Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He lives in Hyde Park, Chicago.
[Ayers's] memoir is a breath of fresh air in this self-absorbed
age. Ayers discusses his reservations about the use of violence to
achieve an end to violence (reservations he held then as well), but
he is unrepentant in believing that . . . right-minded people have
an obligation to resist unjust wars. . . . There are many lessons
still to be learned from such narratives. Recommended.—David
Keymer, Library Journal
"[A] gripping and provocative story . . . What is most remarkable
about this dramatic and revelatory personal and social history are
the always urgent questions it raises about compassion and freedom,
responsibility and community, and the conundrum of how to bring
about much-needed change."—Booklist, starred review
"A challenging, moving, and troubling account . . . Ayers writes
well, lyrically, passionately."—Andrea Behr, San Francisco
Chronicle
"A memoir that is, in effect, a deeply moving elegy to all those
young dreamers who tried to live decently in an indecent world.
Ayers provides a tribute to those better angels of
ourselves."—Studs Terkel, author of Working and The Good War
"With considerable wit, no small amount of remorse, and an anger
that smolders still across the decades, Bill Ayers tells the story
of his quintessentially American trip through the 1960s. That it is
written in a consistently absorbing style with many passages of
undiluted brilliance only adds to its appeal.—Thomas Frank, author
of One Market Under God and What's the Matter with Kansas?
"A gripping account . . . Ayers describes well the deep emotions
that inflamed the '60s."—John Patrick Diggins, Los Angeles
Times
"This is a precious book, not simply because it offers a gripping
personal account of the primal American suspense story of life on
the run, but, more important, because it recreates a critical point
of view and way of thinking that we seem, even a few decades later,
barely able to recall."—Scott Turow, author of Ordinary Heroes and
Ultimate Punishment
"It's been a long time since American political culture last
leftward . . . Extremists of the left have all but disappeared,
while extremists of the right are as common as mushrooms after rain
. . . Ayers has a knack for capturing the spirit of his times . . .
It's a fascinating story."—Jean Dubail, Cleveland Plain Dealer
"Finally, here is an irresistibly readable book that answers the
question, How did a nice suburban boy go from the ordinary
pleasures of his class to the Days of Rage and beyond? Bill Ayers
not only makes this exalting and painful journey comprehensible, he
peoples it with sympathetic family, friends, and lovers, and moves
us with his candor."—Rosellen Brown, author of Before and After and
Half a Heart
"Terrific . . . This memoir rings of hard-learned truth and
integrity and is an important contribution to literature on 1960s
culture and American radicalism."—Publishers Weekly
"What makes Fugitive Days unique is its unsparing detail and its
marvelous human coherence and integrity. Bill Ayers's America and
his family background, his education, his political awakening, his
anger and involvement, his anguished re-emergence from the shadows:
all these are rendered in their truth without a trace of nostalgia
or 'second thinking.' For anyone who cares about the sorry mess we
are in, this book is essential, indeed necessary, reading."—Edward
W. Said, author of Reflections on Exile and Out of Place
"This remarkable memoir gives us the visceral experience of being
on the run. Ayers writes with eloquence and irony. This is one
man's amazingly honest, authentic, and gripping testament—and a
helluva story it makes."—Phillip Lopate, author of Portrait of My
Body
"A wild and painful ride in the savage years of the late sixties. A
very good book about a terrifying time in America."—Hunter S.
Thompson, author of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Hell's
Angels
"For anyone who wants to think hard about the social conflagration
the Vietnam War produced in the U.S., and more generally about a
citizen's obligations in troubled times, Ayers's powerful, morally
charged account of a life and a society in the political balance is
provocative reading."—David Farber, Chicago Tribune
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