Underground: My Life with SDS and the Weathermen (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

From The Washington Post

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by James Rosen "So how does it feel to be the mouthpiece for the murderers?" Those were the first words of Mark Rudd, the former student radical and Weatherman revolutionary, when I called him for an interview five years ago and introduced myself as a reporter for Fox News. A dose of guilt ("This is how it begins, Mark?") calmed him down, and the interview lasted an hour. But the opening jab showed that Rudd, then 56, had not lost the cutting humor or antiwar fervor of his youth. A good thing, too, for without those attributes, his memoir "Underground" would not be the gem that it is. Even those who condemn Rudd's work in history can be grateful for Rudd's work of history. "Underground" is honest and funny, passionate and contrite, meticulously researched and deeply philosophical: an essential document on the '60s. While the author hasn't resolved all the contradictions inherent in his old urban-guerrilla guise, he confronts them admirably, ready to acknowledge the worst in himself. Raised in a middle-class Jewish family in suburban New Jersey, Rudd was radicalized soon after his arrival at Columbia University in 1965. Disgusted by racism and the military-industrial complex, he became active in the Columbia chapter of Students for a Democratic Society, which applied the missionary zeal of the civil rights movement to what had become the defining issue for American college students: the Vietnam War. In April 1968, Rudd was a key figure in the events that culminated in the seizure of several buildings at Columbia. The crisis lasted six days before university administrators called in the cops, who evicted the students in a pre-dawn raid that ended with scores of injuries and 700 arrests. Rudd became an instant media icon, the model for Doonesbury's "Megaphone" Mark Slackmeyer and "in the eyes of the press an easy personification of an entire generation of students in revolt: the middle-class kid who had all the advantages, attended an elite university, but who angrily turned against 'the system' . . . [and] made campus revolt fashionable." Expelled from Columbia, Rudd became a full-time SDS organizer, preaching antiwar radicalism across the nation and bedding every nubile believer who threw herself at this charismatic young evangelist of anti-imperialism. Internal feuding suffocated SDS by June 1969. That's when Rudd and a few hardened comrades -- among them Bill Ayers, whose early support for Barack Obama became an unlikely issue in last year's presidential campaign -- broke away to form the Weathermen. Determined to overthrow America's war machine, the Weathermen mounted the Days of Rage, a chaotic, bloody and sparsely attended three-day rampage on the streets of Chicago in October 1969. Five months later, three Weather members died in a New York City townhouse when the nail bombs they were constructing to use at an officers' dance at Fort Dix detonated prematurely. After that, the group's members assumed false identities, changed their collective name to the Weather Underground and planted two dozen bombs at courthouses, correctional facilities, police stations, the Capitol and the Pentagon. Although his 1970 federal indictment (stemming from the Days of Rage) was dismissed amid revelations of government misconduct, Rudd remained a fugitive. He scouted an occasional bomb location, helped spring Timothy Leary from prison and drove the getaway car in an armed robbery before finally surrendering in September 1977 so that he and his wife could raise their two children in a "normal" home. He never served time and became a math teacher at a community college in New Mexico. The recurring theme in all of Rudd's exploits was cognitive dissonance. He realizes now, he writes, that the Weathermen "reproduced conditions that all hermetically sealed cults use: isolation, sleep deprivation, demanding arbitrary acts of loyalty to the group, even sexual initiation as bonding." But he wouldn't admit this to himself at the time. Even as he "postured and gave speeches on the necessity for violence, I was terrified," he writes. "I knew I was no fighter. . . . I knew that the whole thing was nuts but couldn't intervene to stop it. . . . I felt like a member of the crew on a speeding train, dimly aware of disaster ahead but unable to put on the brakes." He recounts bouts of depression and breakdowns from the strain: "I was exhausted from playing a double role -- the public revolutionary leader and the private scared kid." The irony is that Rudd's turn to radical politics at Columbia was cemented by a friend's remark that he couldn't watch America devastate Vietnam and stand by "like a good German." Yet from 1969 through 1977, no thought voiced or deed done by his Weather comrades, no matter how lunatic or murderous, could dislodge Rudd from his loyalty to their cause; and he is left today with considerable regret that he either took part in the madness or stood idly by, like a good German. The most wrenching scenes in "Underground" depict the suffering of the author's beloved parents, simple, hard-working people who found the whole business unfathomable. "I wonder if I'll ever be able to laugh again," Bertha Rudd said after her son's expulsion from Columbia, "my heart is so broken."
Copyright 2009, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

From Booklist

With the war in Iraq provoking memories of Vietnam, Rudd gave up a 25-year silence on his role in the radical student movement of the 1960s when he lead the Weathermen. The group grew out of the Student for Democratic Society behind massive anti-war and social-justice protests at Columbia University. Rudd recalls his personal journey from idealistic freshman to student radical and the escalating violence that led to the riot during the 1969 Democratic party convention in Chicago and the bombing of a townhouse in Greenwich Village. Rudd spent seven years, from 1970 until 1977, living underground as a federal fugitive before turning himself in. Rudd writes from the perspective of a middle-aged teacher living in New Mexico, still concerned about social justice and heartened by the new administration and growing involvement of young people in politics and civic engagement. He admits shame and guilt about some of the excesses and violence of the radical 1960s, but maintains an enduring pride in the passion and idealism of the time. An engrossing look back at a turbulent time by an iconic figure. --Vanessa Bush

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow; First Edition, 1st Printing edition (March 24, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061472751
• ISBN-13: 978-0061472756
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.4 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #212,131 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent history of life "Underground", April 26, 2009

By	Carl Anderson (Tacoma, WA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I found it hard to put the book down. It is fast paced, intensely personal, funny, and a little depressing. The author doesn't try to romanticize his life as a fugitive. He does give an honest account of his story; the story of the 1968 Columbia strike, the disintegration of Students for a Democratic Society, and the Weather Underground. If you have an interest in what happened to the Vietnam anti-war movement and the radicalization of the 60s, then I would give this a high recommendation. The book is well-written and doesn't dwell in a maze of acronyms of the political movements of the 60s. It ends on a positive note with the 40th reunion of the Columbia strike where the issues of the Black students at Columbia came out to a public setting for the first time.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Must-Read, April 17, 2009

By	Sally Denton - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Eloquent, thoughtful, honest, and unflinching. What might have been either a polemic or apologia is instead a thoroughly engaging narrative about an unforgettable moment in American history. Mark Rudd is authentic and self-effacing. What might have been a heavy lift in less capable hands is an exciting and thought-provoking tale of ideology and courage, naivete and grandiosity, hubris and humility, patriotism and crime. Above all it is a poignant story of what America was and what it became.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best of the Lot, May 4, 2009

By	Nancy Dean Nichols (Deadwood, Oregon) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is the best insider Weatherman book I've read so far. I've read most of them as they came out, mainly to try to get some insight into what the heck happened. I was on the edge of this movement and essentially turned my back on anything political as it got more violent, feeling everyone involved was tainted. This is the first one that spoke to that taint. Mark Rudd's voice has a ring of truth and, unlike some of the authors, presents a hopeful future and does not come across as self serving.