Days of Rage Americas Radical Underground the FBI & the First Age of Terror

The Weathermen. The Symbionese Liberationand#160;Army. The FALN. The Black Liberation Army.and#160;The names seem quaint now, when not forgottenand#160;altogether. But there was a stretch of time inand#160;America, during the 1970s, when bombings by domestic underground groups were a daily occurrence. The FBI combated these groups and others as nodes in aand#160;single revolutionary underground, dedicated to theand#160;violent overthrow of the American government.

The FBIand#8217;s response to the leftist revolutionaryand#160;counterculture has not been treated kindly byand#160;history, and in hindsight many ofand#160;its efforts seem almost comically ineffectual,and#160;if not criminal in themselves. But part ofand#160;the extraordinary accomplishment of Bryanand#160;Burroughand#8217;s Days of Rage is to temperand#160;those easy judgments with an understanding ofand#160;just how deranged these times were, how chargedand#160;with menace. Burrough re-creates an atmosphereand#160;that seems almost unbelievable just forty yearsand#160;later, conjuring a time of native-born radicals,and#160;most of them and#147;nice middle-class kids,and#8221; smugglingand#160;bombs into skyscrapers and detonating them insideand#160;the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol, at a Boston courthouse and a Wall Street restaurant packed withand#160;lunchtime dinersand#151;radicals robbing dozens ofand#160;banks and assassinating policemen in New York,and#160;San Francisco, Atlanta. The FBI, encouraged to do everything possible to undermine the radical underground, itself broke many laws in its attempts to bring the revolutionaries to justiceand#151;often with disastrous consequences.and#160;

Benefiting from the extraordinary number ofand#160;people from the underground and the FBI whoand#160;speak about their experiences for the first time,and#160;Days of Rage is filled with revelationsand#160;and fresh details about the major revolutionariesand#160;and their connections and about the FBI and itsand#160;desperate efforts to make the bombings stop. Theand#160;result is a mesmerizing book that takes us into the hearts and minds ofand#160;homegrown terrorists and federal agents alikeand#160;and weaves their stories into a spellbinding secretand#160;history of the 1970s.

and#8220;In spellbinding fashion, Bryan Burroughand#8217;s Days of Rage brilliantly explicates one of the most confounding periods of recent American historyand#8212;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 Burroughand#8217;s extraordinary skill. I could not put the book down; you won't be able to, either.and#8221;

Beverly Gage, Yale University; author of The Day Wall Street Exploded:and#160;

and#8220;A fascinating portrait of the all-but-forgotten radical underground of the 1960s, and#8217;70s, and and#8217;80s. Burroughs gives us the first full picture of a secret world where radical dreams often ended in personal and political tragedy.and#8221;

Mark Harris, author of Pictures at a Revolution and Five Came Back:and#160;

and#8220;Bryan Burrough gives the story of Americaand#8217;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.and#8221;

Paul Ingrassia, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Engines of Change and Crash Course:and#160;

and#8220;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 didnand#8217;t.and#8221;