About the Book
From the bestselling author of Public Enemies and The Big Rich, an explosive account of the decade-long battle between the FBI and the homegrown revolutionary terrorists of the 1970s
"A fascinating look at an almost forgotten era of homegrown terrorism . . . Utterly captivating, coupling careful historical research with breathless accounts of the bombings and the perpetrators' narrow escapes." -Seattle Times
"A rich and important history." -Washington Post
From the bestselling author of Public Enemies and The Big Rich, an explosive account of the decade-long battle between the FBI and the homegrown revolutionary movements of the 1970s
The Weathermen. The Symbionese Liberation Army. The FALN. The Black Liberation Army. The names seem quaint now, when not forgotten altogether. But there was a time in America, during the 1970s, when bombings by domestic underground groups were a daily occurrence. The FBI combated these and other groups as nodes in a single revolutionary underground, dedicated to the violent overthrow of the American government.
In Days of Rage, Bryan Burrough re-creates an atmosphere that seems almost unbelievable just forty years later, conjuring a time of native-born radicals, most of them "nice middle-class kids," smuggling bombs into skyscrapers and detonating them inside the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol, at a Boston courthouse and a Wall Street restaurant packed with lunchtime diners. The FBI's fevered response included the formation of a secret task force called Squad 47, dedicated to hunting the groups down and rolling them up. But Squad 47 itself broke many laws in its attempts to bring the revolutionaries to justice, and its efforts ultimately ended in fiasco.
Drawing on revelatory interviews with members of the underground and the FBI who speak about their experiences for the first time, Days of Rage is a mesmerizing book that takes us into the hearts and minds of homegrown terrorists and federal agents alike and weaves their stories into a spellbinding secret history of the 1970s.
About the Author :
Bryan Burrough is the author or coauthor of seven books, including Barbarians at the Gate, The Big Rich, Public Enemies, Forget the Alamo, and The Gunfighters. A longtime correspondent at Vanity Fair and now editor at large at Texas Monthly, he lives in Austin.
Review :
“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.”—Boston Globe
“A rich and important history.”—Washington Post
“Impressively researched and deeply engrossing."—LA Times
“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.”—Seattle Times
“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.”—Chicago Tribune
“Days of Rage is bound to alter the conversation about this crucial topic of our time.”—Vanity Fair
“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.”—History News Network
“Burroughs’s insights are powerful. . . Doggedly pursuing former radicals who’ve never spoken on the record before,Vanity Fair special correspondent Burrough (The Big Rich) delivers an exhaustive history of the mostly ignored period of 1970s domestic terrorism”—Publishers Weekly
“A fascinating, in-depth look at a tumultuous period of American unrest.”—Booklist
"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 . . . Sheds light on how the war on terror is being waged today."—Kirkus Reviews
“In spellbinding fashion, Bryan Burrough’s Days of Rage brilliantly explicates one of the most confounding periods of recent American history—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 Burrough’s extraordinary skill. I could not put the book down; you won't be able to, either.”—William D. Cohan, author of House of Cards, Money and Power, and The Price of Silence
“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.”—Beverly Gage, Yale University, author of The Day Wall Street Exploded
“Bryan Burrough gives the story of America’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.”—Mark Harris, author of Pictures at a Revolution and Five Came Back
“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 didn’t.”—Paul Ingrassia, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Engines of Change and Crash Course
