Bombing its way into the headlines of the early 1970s the Weather Underground was one of the most dramatic symbols of the anger felt by young Americans opposed to the US presence in Vietnam. Mauled in street battles with the Chicago police during the Days of Rage demonstrations, Weather concluded that traditional political protest was insufficient to end the war. They turned instead to underground guerrilla combat. In this highly readable history, Ron Jacobs captures the hair-raising drama of a campaign which planted bombs in banks, military installations and, twice on successive days, in the US Capitol. He describes the group's formation of clandestine revolutionary cells, its leaders' disavowal of monogamous relationships, and their use of LSD to strengthen bonds between members. He recounts the operational failures of the group - three members died when a bomb they were building exploded in Greenwich Village - as well as its victories including a successful jailbreak of Timothy Leary. Never short-changing the fierce debates which underpinned the Weather's strategy, Jacobs argues that the groups eventual demise resulted as much from the contradictions of its politics as from the increasingly repressive FBI attention.
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The Weather Underground was a small band of no more than a few hundred radicals, yet the fringe group was widely feared and revered as notorious bombers and violent revolutionaries. In The Way the Wind Blew Ron Jacobs presents a history of the group, from its origins on college campuses to the surrender of its last fugitive members in the 1980s. Along the way they set off bombs (...) and issued communiqués that were largely irrelevant if not incomprehensible to the American public. The dispassionate tone of this book allows for a credible narrative history of the group and its most prominent members, but many questions about the group's motivations remain unanswered.
From Library Journal
Jacobs (librarian, Univ. of Vermont-Burlington), a writer for the alternative monthly Works in Progress, presents a political history of the American New Left group Weatherman, a.k.a. Weather Underground Organization or Weather. Jacobs focuses on Weatherman's policy statements, e.g., Prairie Fire (1973), and its politics of revolutionary youth, anti-imperialism, anti-capitalism, and anti-racism. He traces Weatherman from its origins in Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in 1969, through its activist years from late 1969 to mid-1970s (e.g., the October 1969 Days of Rage in Chicago, street protests, and bombings of the U.S. Capitol and other targets), to its demise in the 1980s as its members either were arrested, surrendered, or left the organization. Despite the lack of historical and contextual explanations and a critical evaluation of WUO's actions, Jacob's engaging and sympathetic political narration is recommended for academic and larger public libraries.?Charles L. Lumpkins, Bloomsburg Univ. Lib., Pa.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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More About the Author
Raised as a military brat, Ron Jacobs spent many of his child and teen years in US outposts abroad, from Pakistan to Germany. He continued his traveling ways after he left home, hitchhiking around the United States. He writes regularly for Counterpunch, Dissident Voice and other webzines. His essays, articles and reviews have appeared in print and web journals around the world. He currently lives in Burlington, VT.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
55 of 59 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Dylan was right after all,
This review is from: The Way the Wind Blew (Haymarket) (Paperback)
The young activists of the Weather Underground were inspired by the National Liberation Front in Vietnam and the Black Panthers at home. And more than anything else they were fueled by a righteous rage against imperialist, racist `Amerika'. When the dust settled on 20th century history they wanted to be counted on the side of the revolution, not with the oppressors.The book begins at the end of the 60s with the protests at Columbia University and Weatherman's emergence from the splintering New Left group, Students for a Democratic Society. It follows the group's progress from public protest and pitched battles with police, to its decision to wage war on Amerika as an underground revolutionary movement. Jacobs covers the landmark events in the group's history: the jail break of counter-culture guru Timothy Leary, the bombings of the Pentagon and the Capitol and the eventual death, apprehension and surrender of many of Weather's key members. It's a sad and disturbing story. It is hard to credit Weather with any lasting positive achievements. They unleased mayhem and destruction in the name of justice but retired from the struggle defeated. One of most harrowing episodes in the book is the Greewich Village townhouse explosion. The result of an accident, it killed three of Weather's members (Diana Oughton, Ted Gold and Terry Robins). The group were building bombs out of dynamite and nails when one exploded, destroying the building and sending the two survivors, Cathy Wilkerson and Kathy Boudin, running half naked into the street. The book's photographs are a reminder of how young the three activists must have been at the time they died. Jacobs states his sympathies up front. He writes that he "admired [Weather's] style and its ability to hit targets which in my view deserved to be hit." But even as an inspired observer he admits that even he doesn't understand the group's politics. Jacobs is objective enough to cover some of the less flattering moments in Weather's history. For example, although she's depicted like movie star on the front cover, between the pages Weather spokeswoman Bernadine Dohrn is caught gloating over the Manson murders in a 1969 speech. The major shortcoming of the book is a lack of fresh first-hand material. Jacobs' sources seem to have been mostly archival. I finshed the book wanting to know what Weather's survivors thought now about the riots, the bombings and their years underground. I wanted a glimpse inside their heads, to understand a little of what they thought they were going to achieve. If you want to know what the Weather Underground was, what it did, and what happened to its members, this book gives a history from begining to end. No other book does that. But if you want to know what it all means, you're going to have to figure that out for yourself.
21 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A great book---if placed in the right context,
By Brett Winters (Washington, DC USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Way the Wind Blew (Haymarket) (Paperback)
Jacobs, certainly with a leftist perspective, attempts to explain the motives of the Weather Underground. Classify them as terrorists or glorify them as heroes, but either way, they made an undisputable mark on history if one is willing to take the time to write reviews characterizing them as both. The fact is that in 200 pages, one can not clearly express what the Weather Organization did, why, and when those actions occured and why that timing was deemed necessary. In spite of that, Jacobs gives a great framework, regardless of your perspectives on the movement, for a cursory survey. In that context, this is perhaps the best book on the movement. If you are seriously researching the movement, this is great background, but in 200 pages, you'll never get the whole story.
45 of 65 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
A rehash of old sources; unanalytical,
By
This review is from: The Way the Wind Blew (Haymarket) (Paperback)
Many of the issues discussed are framed in a rather negative and unanalytical context. While I agree that mistakes were made and lots of weird things happened, the author's recounting does little to help one figure out why things happened the way they did, in the context of the times.1. The book contains a litany of weird things done by the Weather Underground, with very little effort at understanding or explanation, or attempt to place in context. I don't think there are easy answers for what happened and what went wrong, but what I would like to see in a study is something that helps one understand. What we have here is not much more than a review of old newspaper stories and some books. Much more primary material is needed, namely, frank interviews with people who were there. That's not easy, because the people are dispersed and not necessarily anxious to talk. But the book fails without some serious first-hand views. And it should be noted that not everything published at the time, by Weather or others, was necessarily reliable or accurate. 2. The author uses a lot of the rhetoric and slogans of the era without definition or explanation. Examples: fascism, imperialism, nationalist (page 3); black colony (page 27); ultra-leftism (page 146). 3. I don't agree that the original Weatherman paper did "little else" than define the role of black people in the U.S. (page 27). 4. I thought the reference to the Weather sign about GE workers (page 75) was peculiar. Perhaps it's accurate, perhaps it's not. To the extent it represents an actual syndrome, more supporting material would be helpful. 5. There are many glaring misspellings and errors of fact. Examples: Pages 4, 6: Fairmont Hotel misspelled. Page 5: Herbert Marcuse was at San Diego, not San Jose. Page 7: Terry Robbins was from Ohio (as noted on page 100), not Michigan. Page 23: Dean Rusk misspelled (note 4). Page 62: Richard Elrod was not a corporate attorney; he was a city attorney, as noted on the next page. The story of what happened to Elrod is an interesting one, but the book doesn't really have it. Page 84: The date of the War Council is wrong in the last paragraph; it was at the end of December, 1969. Page 114: The lawyer's name is incorrect. Page 116: First paragraph, incorrect name of Tom C. Huston. Page 135: Leslie Bacon was called as a grand jury witness but I don't think she was charged with the Capitol bombing. Page 137: The Georgia Straight was not an Atlanta newspaper; it was from Vancouver, B.C. Page 146: Van Lydegraf was in his fifties, not his sixties. I'm not certain that he was expelled from either the CP or PL. He may have quit. Pages 174-178: This section has numerous errors of fact and interpretation regarding PFOC. Page 175: Mark Perry misspelled. Page 179, top paragraph: The use of the passive voice here is not responsible. Who suggested this? Page 180: Grace Fortner was not the name of the "woman originally identified as Esther." Page 186: PFOC did not exist in Seattle in 1990-91. All of these errors, and many more not mentioned, demonstrate two things: the author was not really familiar with the subject, and the book was poorly edited.
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