Customer Reviews

Steal This Dream: Abbie Hoffman & the Countercultural REvolustion in America

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Larry 'Ratso' Sloman has created a masterpiece with his oral biography of Abbie Hoffman. Not just the story of a fascinating, complex, American clown and activist, Steal This Dream is perhaps the first major book to put the sixties and seventies in perspective. Sloman knew Abbie and many of the other players intimately, and they open up to him with a forthrightness and honesty only possible now that the events are decades in the past. Hardly a homage to Hoffman, this excellent and highly readable book will make Hoffman worshippers cringe and Hoffman haters respectful. Larry Sloman deserves a Pulitzer.

I came to this book with only a cursory knowledge of Abbie Hoffman and his generation of the Yippies. I found this book very interesting and entertaining exposing Abbie for all his faults and successes as a peace/environmental activitist. The only problem I have is that the oral history format leaves holes in the story and makes some of the comments hard to put in context. More context from the author between the passages would have made it more enjoyable reading. Overall, this was a very interesting book.

This book is a pretty good overview Abbie Hoffman. It uses differing quotes to outline who and what he was about. For the real deal, however, readers should turns to Hoffman's own autobiography "Soon to be a Major Motion Picture".