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What a book! Exhilarating, maddening, contemplative, and mournful.--Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
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Riveting as a thriller, this wise and searching memoir . . . tells a story about America we've never quite heard before. . . . Fearless, big-hearted, and profound. I simply couldn't put it down.--Cheryl Strayed
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Conjured into the present by a genuine literary master, recollecting what he saw as a sensitive child, the oft-told tale of the Weathermen catches fire here.--Rick Perlstein
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A rare and profound gift--one that breaks your heart even as it quietly fills it with hope. . . . It is everything we need right now: deeply moving and urgent.--Heather Ann Thompson
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A fascinating journey that illuminates, in often thought-provoking ways, the politics of violence in radical movements.--Angela Davis
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Zayd Ayers Dohrn is a master storyteller. . . . The rare memoir that reads like a fast-paced thriller and leaves you wrestling with some of the most profound political questions of our time.--Jon Favreau
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It's like nothing I've ever read. . . . An astonishing story written with such an open heart.--Alex Kotlowitz
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[A] remarkable new history and memoir...an unsettling portrait of the idealism of one Chicago family.--Christopher Borrelli "Chicago Tribune"
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Poignant, fueled with love for justice, with faith in other people, with terrific, often heartbreaking stories. . . . A page-turner and a statement of belief in the future.--Aleksandar Hemon
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I love Zayd Ayers Dohrn's new book.
Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, and Young: A Fugitive Family in the Revolutionary Underground, and want radicals, revolutionaries and renegades everywhere to dive into it and discover its treasures, from the brilliant title to the exhilarating ending and with remarkable stops in between. . . .
Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, and Young: A Fugitive Family in the Revolutionary Underground will occupy a special space in my library and in my heart.--Jonah Raskin "Counterpunch"
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This incredible memoir starts off at about hundred miles an hour and rarely lets up, telling the tender and breathless story of life on the run in America when your mom is on the FBI's most wanted list.-- "Lit Hub"
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[One of] my favorite memoirs of the year so far...This riveting memoir...grapples with the family's complex legacy of social justice and political violence.--Tom Beer "Kirkus Reviews"
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A richly layered story that blends investigative rigor with emotional depth. ... Dohrn draws provocative connections between the radicalism of the 1960s and today's fractured political landscape, inviting readers to consider how cycles of dissent, repression, and moral certainty repeat across generations. The result is a beautifully written, deeply humane memoir, quietly devastating in its refusal of easy answers.-- "Booklist (starred review)"
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A frank and fascinating chronicle...Dohrn goes into great detail about the Weather Underground's history as a militant leftist organization, but anchors the account in his intimate experiences...A powerful blend of personal and political history.-- "Publisher's Weekly (starred review)"
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A searing memoir... a meticulously researched history of an explosive time as well as a deeply felt, intimate portrait of a very unusual family... beautifully written.--Dana Spiotta "New York Times"
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An uneasy reckoning with the exciting, purposeful, terrifying and sometimes traumatizing childhood that his parents' politics created for him... direct, searching, confessional... tragic and poetically appropriate: His writing is both an act of filial piety, sharing and thereby extending his mother's work, and a 'natural way to transform my inheritance.' The work of making sense of her revolution is now his.--Jordan Kisner "New York Times Magazine"
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Sweeping... Ambitious... Zayd Dohrn is both warm and penetrating, drawing on his critical distance as he zooms in on his parents' American upbringings, motivations, actions, and explanations for their complicated legacies for the American left... Ayers Dohrn's memoir contribute to a better history of the '60s, one that can supply healthier lessons for those seeking to combat the current administration's wars at home and abroad.--Michael Koncewicz "Jacobin"
Publisher Marketing:
Zayd Ayers Dohrn was born underground. His parents were fugitives after a decade fighting the US government; his mother was on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list. All his life, Dohrn's parents said his birth marked a clean break with violent revolutionary struggle, but in this explosive memoir, he discovers that story wasn't entirely true.
This masterpiece of personal and social history brings us inside an infamous family and their lives underground. Drawing on exclusive interviews, declassified FBI files, and long-hidden letters, photos, and diaries, Dohrn tells a new story of radical resistance, including revelations about the Weathermen's bombing campaign, their secret alliance with the Black Liberation Army, and the dramatic prison break of Assata Shakur.
Reckoning with the emotional damage the Weathermen inflicted on their victims, their children, and themselves, Dohrn's unflinching memoir explores the roots of radicalism and asks how a young person survives when the place they feel safest--with their family--also puts them in danger.
Review Citations:
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Publishers Weekly 04/20/2026 (EAN 9781324089315, Hardcover) - *Starred Review
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Kirkus Reviews 04/01/2026 (EAN 9781324089315, Hardcover)
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Booklist 05/01/2026 (EAN 9781324089315, Hardcover) - *Starred Review
Contributor Bio:Dohrn, Zayd Ayers
An acclaimed playwright and screenwriter,
Zayd Ayers Dohrn is a professor and director of the MFA in Writing for Screen and Stage at Northwestern University. He is creator of the hit narrative podcast
Mother Country Radicals and the rock protest musical
Revolution(s).
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