Days Of Rage: America's Radical Underground, the FBI, and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary Violence

(Paperback)

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The Weathermen. The Symbionese Liberation Army. The FALN. The Black Liberation Army. The names seem quaint now, but there was a stretch of time in America when there was on average more than one significant terrorist act in the U.S. every week. The FBI combated these groups and others as nodes in a single revolutionary underground, dedicated to the violent overthrow of the American government. Thus began a decade-long battle between the FBI and these homegrown terrorists, compellingly and thrillingly documented in Days of Rage.

Reviews

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 . . . . 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:
Burroughss insights are powerful. . . Doggedly pursuing former radicals whove never spoken on the record before,Vanity Fairspecial correspondent Burrough (The Big Rich) delivers an exhaustive history of the mostly ignored period of 1970s domestic terrorism

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 Burroughs Days of Rage brilliantly explicates one of the most confounding periods of recent American historythe 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 Burroughs 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 Americas 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 didnt.

Author Bio

Bryan Burroughis a special correspondentatVanity Fairand the author of five previous books,includingThe Big RichandPublic Enemies. A formerreporter forthe Wall Street Journal, he is a three-timewinner of the Gerald Loeb Award for excellence infinancial journalism.