Customer Reviews

At 80: An Old Bird's Eye View of the Year Following September 11, 2001

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The best of many excellent things about this book is that there is no neat pigeonhole to put it in, either in style or content. It's not a personal memoir, an analytic essay, or a journalistic account of the traumatic year after 9-11. Rather, it's a unique combination of all these; and in that way corresponds to and illuminates how most of us actually dealt with the awful roller coaster ride. There's plenty of emotion here, and also plenty of insight. The volume shifts back and forth so gracefully between these levels (and others) that I often felt like I was reliving that time rather than just reading about it.

Politically, the author refrains from the all-too-common effort to make the complexities of today's world neater and simpler than they are. Leon Wofsy doesn't surrender an inch to George Bush's rationalizations for permanent war, repression and empire. But he doesn't offer mere cheerleading platitudes to the antiwar camp or shy away from frank discussion of the dangers of terrorism, violence or political irresponsibility from any political quarter. Don't look here for old formulas or easy answers. Rather, the author lets us listen in as a veteran of 60-plus years in radical movements "thinks out loud" and wrestles with the dilemmas of a new century. I highly recommend this "old bird's eye view of the year following September 11, 2001" to every reader grappling with those same dilemmas.