A Radical Line: From the Labor Movement to the Weather Underground One Family's Century of Conscience - Hardcover

Jones, Thai

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0743250273 ISBN 13: 9780743250276

Publisher: Free Pr, 2004

Synopsis

A journalist son of a radical activist family recounts the lives of his grandparents and parents, the latter of who were arrested in 1981 for their underground work, in a personal story that follows the author's family's witness and response to the daily realities of the culturally diverse Brooklyn tenement district, the Depression, McCarthyism, and the civil rights movement. 35,000 first printing.

About this title

Review

Marge Piercy Thai Jones relates the lives of two families without much money or success in the usual sense but in which men and women tried to live by their political and ethical ideas no matter what the cost. Jones treats it all with sympathy and a sly irony. He has an exciting story to tell, and he tells it well.

William Ayers Distinguished Professor of Education, University of Illinois at Chicago, and author of "Fugitive Days: A Memoir""A Radical Line" is provocative, funny, heartbreaking, and touching in turn. Thai Jones combines a journalist's nose, an ethnographer's endurance, and a novelist's hand as he brings to life an array of memorable characters, each making his or her twisty way through the tempest of their times. The result is a finely crafted and expertly calibrated memoir of real literary merit that echoes down the decades as a fitting homage to those who lived their lives against the grain.

Dan T. Carter author of "Scottsboro" and "The Politics of Rage" "The Personal Is Political," wrote a feminist writer in 1969; Thai Jones's beautifully rendered account of his radical family's history helps us understand the complex meaning of that oft-quoted phrase. Alternately painful and inspiring, this is a story that will help a new generation understand why memories of the 1960s still divide Americans.

Gloria Emerson author of "Loving Graham Greene" A wonderfully readable, often harrowing, story of the Americans in two families who felt compelled to defy their government and how and why they did so. In a time of war and vile deception, this is a most powerful, timely story. I loved this book.

Naomi Foner Gyllenhaal Academy Award-nominated screenwriter of "Running On Empty" The real "Running On Empty." A look back across three generations of a committed family. Full of love and drama and patriotism in the best sense of the word. You need to read this book.

Kirkus Reviews (starred review) One of the best forays into the "Days of Rage" -- event, prequel, and sequel -- to have appeared in years.

Edition details

• Publisher: Free Pr
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0743250273
• ISBN 13: 9780743250276
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 321