Bill Ayers

Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, and Young by Zayd Dohrn

Please come to one of these gatherings:

MAY 21–BOOK PARTY at Haymarket House

MAY 22–Reading/Q and A at City Lit Books

MAY 26–In conversation with Alex Kotlowitz at Bookends and Beginnings

You can RSVP at the links above. And please help spread the word if you know folks who might be interested.

You can also preorder the book here. And check out this story in the Chicago Tribune and this excerpt in The New Yorker

Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, and Young (W.W. Norton, 2026):

“A fascinating journey that illuminates, in often thought-provoking ways, the politics of violence in radical movements.”

— Angela Davis

“Riveting as a thriller, this wise and searching memoir tells a story about America we’ve never quite heard before. Fearless, big-hearted, and profound. I simply couldn’t put it down.”

— Cheryl Strayed

“What a book! Exhilarating, maddening, contemplative, and mournful. Dohrn shows how each of us must grapple with the moral and human dimensions of our movements.”

— Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

“Zayd Ayers Dohrn is a master storyteller. The rare memoir that reads like a fast-paced thriller and leaves you wrestling with some of the most profound political questions of our time.”

— Jon Favreau

“Conjured into the present by a genuine literary master, recollecting what he saw as a sensitive child, the oft-told tale of the Weathermen catches fire here.”

― Rick Perlstein

“It’s like nothing I’ve ever read. An astonishing story written with such an open heart.”

— Alex Kotlowitz

“A rare and profound gift—one that breaks your heart even as it quietly fills it with hope. It is everything we need right now: deeply moving and urgent.”

— Heather Ann Thompson

“Poignant, fueled with love for justice, with faith in other people, with terrific, often heartbreaking stories. A page-turner and a statement of belief in the future.”

— Aleksandar Hemon

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/_qDoXPi6TiS5r_96WAadfw#/registration

https://greenlightbookstore.com/event/2026-05-18/pre-release-book-launch-zayd-ayers-dohrn-jelani-cobb

We love our children. The World War II war correspondent Martha Gellhorn noted that we Americans are famous the world around for loving our children, and that many think we love them unwisely and too well. Perhaps we’re so busy loving our own children that we fail to notice that other mothers in other lands— poor mothers, brown-skinned mothers—also love their children, but with anguish now, and fear, because our American government menaces them.

The deranged optimism and single-minded self-importance of wealthy white men defines the current political class—it is so distinctly made-in-America.

Here’s what it means to engage in an asynchronous war, using the US/Israel attack on Iran as a case-in-point:
Iran wins if it doesn’t lose; the US loses if it doesn’t win.

Donald Trump’s arrogance knows no limits, and his pomposity can be at once comic and terrifying. His administration is indeed a fascist regime bucked up by a minority fascist movement—although the US is not yet a fascist society. And this is where a major conflict emerges.
Trump’s swagger becomes more lethal every day, making him a perfect target for a growing resistance. But the question being contested in the streets—through banners and chants as well as countless face-to-face dialogues—and throughout society is whether this advancing popular energy will be channeled exclusively into the electoral arena by the leaders of the Democratic Party, or whether it can lead us to a more robust conversation and a more thoroughgoing effort to reimagine, repair, and rebuild society on a more fundamental and just basis.
In this regard people are increasingly aware that the crises we’re facing are the result of bipartisan policies for decades: Democrats and Republicans alike built the military behemoth that menaces the world; both parties have been desperately threatening other countries with the goal of holding on to the dwindling US hegemony in the world economy; both parties funded Israel and provided diplomatic cover for Israeli lawlessness; both supported the astronomical growth of prisons, the militarization of domestic police forces, the shifting of public assets to private hands, and any resistance to universal, publicly-funded healthcare.