In Fugitive Days, Ayers tells the real story of the defining events of the radical ’60s. The book is an eyewitness account of a young pacifist who helped found one of the most radical political organizations in U.S. history, and who consequently lived for ten years as a fugitive. In a new era of antiwar activism and suppression of protest, Fugitive Days is more poignant and relevant than ever.
Quotes
“[Ayers’s] memoir is a breath of fresh air in this self-absorbed age. Ayers discusses his reservations about the use of violence to achieve an end to violence (reservations he held then as well), but he is unrepentant in believing that . . . right-minded people have an obligation to resist unjust wars. . . . There are many lessons still to be learned from such narratives. Recommended.”
—David Keymer, Library Journal
“[A] gripping and provocative story . . . What is most remarkable about this dramatic and revelatory personal and social history are the always urgent questions it raises about compassion and freedom, responsibility and community, and the conundrum of how to bring about much-needed change.”
—Booklist, starred review
“A challenging, moving, and troubling account . . . Ayers writes well, lyrically, passionately.”
—Andrea Behr, San Francisco Chronicle
“A memoir that is, in effect, a deeply moving elegy to all those young dreamers who tried to live decently in an indecent world. Ayers provides a tribute to those better angels of ourselves.”
—Studs Terkel, author of Working and The Good War
“With considerable wit, no small amount of remorse, and an anger that smolders still across the decades, Bill Ayers tells the story of his quintessentially American trip through the 1960s. That it is written in a consistently absorbing style with many passages of undiluted brilliance only adds to its appeal.
—Thomas Frank, author of One Market Under God and What’s the Matter with Kansas?
“A gripping account . . . Ayers describes well the deep emotions that inflamed the ’60s.”
—John Patrick Diggins, Los Angeles Times
“This is a precious book, not simply because it offers a gripping personal account of the primal American suspense story of life on the run, but, more important, because it recreates a critical point of view and way of thinking that we seem, even a few decades later, barely able to recall.”
—Scott Turow, author of Ordinary Heroes and Ultimate Punishment
“It’s been a long time since American political culture last leftward . . . Extremists of the left have all but disappeared, while extremists of the right are as common as mushrooms after rain . . . Ayers has a knack for capturing the spirit of his times . . . It’s a fascinating story.”
—Jean Dubail, Cleveland Plain Dealer
“Finally, here is an irresistibly readable book that answers the question, How did a nice suburban boy go from the ordinary pleasures of his class to the Days of Rage and beyond? Bill Ayers not only makes this exalting and painful journey comprehensible, he peoples it with sympathetic family, friends, and lovers, and moves us with his candor.”
—Rosellen Brown, author of Before and After and Half a Heart
“Terrific . . . This memoir rings of hard-learned truth and integrity and is an important contribution to literature on 1960s culture and American radicalism.”
—Publishers Weekly
“What makes Fugitive Days unique is its unsparing detail and its marvelous human coherence and integrity. Bill Ayers’s America and his family background, his education, his political awakening, his anger and involvement, his anguished re-emergence from the shadows: all these are rendered in their truth without a trace of nostalgia or ‘second thinking.’ For anyone who cares about the sorry mess we are in, this book is essential, indeed necessary, reading.”
—Edward W. Said, author of Reflections on Exile and Out of Place
“This remarkable memoir gives us the visceral experience of being on the run. Ayers writes with eloquence and irony. This is one man’s amazingly honest, authentic, and gripping testament—and a helluva story it makes.”
—Phillip Lopate, author of Portrait of My Body
“A wild and painful ride in the savage years of the late sixties. A very good book about a terrifying time in America.”
—Hunter S. Thompson, author of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Hell’s Angels
“For anyone who wants to think hard about the social conflagration the Vietnam War produced in the U.S., and more generally about a citizen’s obligations in troubled times, Ayers’s powerful, morally charged account of a life and a society in the political balance is provocative reading.”
—David Farber, Chicago Tribune
Links to purchase:
Beacon: http://www.beacon.org/productdetails.cfm?SKU=3277
Find it at a local independent bookstore: http://www.indiebound.org/hybrid?filter0=fugitive+days+activist
Barnes & Noble: http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Fugitive-Days/William-Ayers/e/9780807032770/?itm=1
Bill Ayers 
Do you care about all people or only certain people?
heading out to buy the book! History is always full of lessons for today, and Dr. Ayer’s past also holds answers to who we are as a nation and a people. Without the anti war movement of the 60s, the voices against this war would have no outlet.
After seeing you on GMA and reading about your memoir, I look forward to knowing more. As a child of the 80’s, I wish my generation had the passion and convictions of yours. I hate this War and need to put my belief into some sort of action-my first step was voting in this election and my second is to become more involved. Thanks for continuing to wake America up with your writing, teaching and presence.
This has to be one of the best books I have ever read. I’m never giving up my signed hardcover copy from 2001.
Saw your interview on Good Morning America. I love how the interviewer kept asking questions that didn’t go anywhere. Moreover, he kept skirting the issue you raised: the massive amount of harm the United States caused the people of Vietnam.
-John
Dear Bill
I watched your one-on-one on abc this morning (our time in the Middle East). I salute you for all your humanitarian stands and positions and I happened to have a clip that made my heart cry out. Please watch and try to comment, or at least get in touch with those missled inocent American soliders
This is an amazing short video from ANP …. believe me; it’s a MUST see !!
http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1417423198/bctid1460763005
Hi Bill,
Perhaps you will get to read this one day, it’s a small and personal story but one worth telling after all thee years.
We probably crossed paths years ago, although I can’t really be sure. I had just been discharged from the army after being court marshalled for going AWOL and for refusing to report to basic training. The army experience radicalized me, and early the next Spring I ran into Dave Gilbert and some other folks in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. They had just rented a house on 14th Street to organize white working class youth to go to Chicago to pay the cops back for 1968.
Turned out that I and a friend of mine named Patty were the only potential recruits, but for the next few months I hung around the house and we even managed to organize a local demo at the Armory down the block.
David, whom I was closest too, really tried hard to get me to go to Chicago, but I never got the importance of this action, which seemed totally insane to me and much too dangerous to even try. I believe there was also a Wendy in the house, Dionne (spelling?), and Phil. At least those are the people I remember most.
I missed being arrested at the infamous “Park House Restaurant” affair by a few minutes that day because I was crashing from a substance I will not name here and got up late and missed what I believe was a karate exercise in the park. You know the rest so I won’t repeat it here.
David even visited me shortly before the Chicago affair to ask me one more time if I would go to Chicago. I really liked David, in my mind he was the most decent, honest, and caring person that I had met from SDS. I felt bad for him because he felt he was a wimp for fearing the militant stuff you folks were planning.
I told him he should stick around and work with folks in the neighborhood, that we needed such people desperately. But as you obviously know, David took another path and I did not hear anything from him or about him until his arrest.
I’ve been writing to him ever since the arrest, and he remains my friend.
I went on to become an activist in my neighborhood here in Brooklyn and remain one today. I worked with folks from the other SDS faction (always forget who was “Rim1 and Rim2!) after Weather folks went underground.
One person connected with the Weather faction — the Queens House — who did not go underground came to my neighborhood and tried to entrap me and some high school kids into doing something nutty. I got suspicious of him after a time and backed out. He turned out to be a cop!! I won’t mention the name but I’m sure you know who he was. I came within an inch of disaster with this creep.
In any case it pleases me to know that you are doing all the great work that you are doing, and I really admired your discipline in not speaking to the media during the presidential campaign.
With all the obvious limitations of an Obama presidency, the people again have awoken and will be playing a roll in national politics. I’d like to thik that the work we both have done over the years played a roll in making this happen.
I’m active today in progressive politics with a Bay Ridge, Brooklyn group and also working on a project to open a gay community center in Brooklyn.
I also do a political satire web site: newyorkslime.com
Best Regards,
Mike Castellano
Let me add to the above that I do not agree with violent protest, and can only hope after reading your memoir that this is not glamorized or reasoned as an effective way to get your point across.
Prof. Ayers
I came to this website to find out the truth after all have been said about election. I am shocked to see from what had postsed — so many hate, specially the languange used to express the hate. I have read more about your profile and, although I don’t necessary agree with the tactic you use, I agree with the principle you had. I believe that “domestic terroist” is a false claim that Sarah Palin gave, it was not the intent or purpose for you and your organizition. When I read those chilling threat in those posts, I feel sad — and an urgency that the education in this great (all of the those people seems to think) country is much needed.
You have kept your silence while some might have made a name for themselve with such oppunity. Your action or the lack of it wins my ultmost respects. So keep up your work and be careful.
Thanks to all who have contributed to this web site, it has brought me back again in memory to my (our) days in Berkeley, circa 1951 through 1969.
Actually I still feel good for the efforts I and others made during those days, and in contrasting with recent election media events, the importance of “participation” with others still gives strength to my existence(s).
The “media” does include publishing books, even typing here.
The part “weapons” of mass distribution plays is confusing, certainly more than risky, it is “horror” for us all, … well, maybe a few feel no pain, how about the label, “psychopathic”, without feeling.
Even in thinking back to the Sixties, the number of times that sharing information did wonders, has been a driver for me to continue, yes, taking the risks of sharing. For example, above Hoag ends his comments with the label “coward” (directed towards Ayers?). Look up the definition, a tail on a rabbit, thus it is no shame that I recognize my own lack of wanting to run into a “war zone”, for what even reasons, Gold-On-Demand, Country, Father Land, this kind of talk is like a Suicide in the Name of some Heavenly Reward, maybe a promise of a home for your family if the cost benefits of your sacrifice “pays off”.
Yes, I am a Cynic (the beggar lying by the road like a “DOG”), and even Mr. Ayers’ connection of “terrorism” with “random” killing and injuries (better to injury the “enemy” than to kill, that costs the “opposition” more).
No, I do agree with what is conveyed by the comments about what Mr. Ayers writes and speaks: the answer is not static, the events are erratic, we have minds and hearts evolved slowly (by most measures).
Science is on the side of small steps, less losses that way, Ayers is alive today, please don’t feel too bad about this, otherwise my life will spiral up or down, helically, in triplets codes, looking back or forward, to past or future; Marx and Engles were “scientific socialists”, communalists, for which they self designated themselves as distinguishable from other socialists, as small “c”, communists.
Big “C” or small “c”, the waves moves proportinally, time for some “new math”. Count the number of uniques ways to speak or write to others, it roughly increases as the square of the number of people in the circle of communicating people.
So even the Internet has it’s limits to solving local, state, national, or international problems. Time is on the side of peace, whereas “WAR” destroys time, condemns both future and past (distorts it).
I sign up for that bit of organizing in small circles, and the “tool” is here, and now, get larger circles, others forms of organizing will be required,… fortunately we humans do have institutional memories, the media of memory.
“Stop complaining said the farmer, who told you a cow(ard) to be, high above you wings the swallow, flying swiftly to the sea…” If I remember the words correctly, thanks Joan B.
Thank you Bill Ayers and family for all your hard work and contributions over the years. Your efforts have been appreciated far and wide for decades. Keep the fires burning!
Love & Mercy
from Edmonton, Alberta