Public Enemy

Starred review from July 8, 2013
In this witty and spirited follow-up to Fugitive Days, Weather Underground cofounder Ayers chronicles his return to society after years on the lam as well as life after being branded a “terrorist” by Sarah Palin during Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, an accusation that led to rampant death threats. Among the book’s many edifying elements, including insight into the inner life and deep humanity of a man portrayed as a “cartoon character,” is the author’s conversational style and whimsical sense of humor. After the election, Ayers sent Palin a note “suggesting that we launch a talk show together called ‘Palling Around with Sarah and Bill.’ ” He also hilariously chronicles his conversation with right-wing blogger Ann Leary as to whether he was the real author of Obama’s memoir Dreams from My Father. Through humor and self-reflection, the book offers a complex portrait of Ayers, including his experiences as an early education specialist, professor, husband (to former Weather Underground leader Bernardine Dohrn), father of three, author, and activist. Readers will likely agree with television host Stephen Colbert that Ayers is “a sixties radical who planted a bomb in the Capitol Building and then went on to even more heinous crimes by becoming a college professor.” Oftentimes riotously funny, yet also plainspoken and serious, this is a memoir of impressive range.

November 1, 2013
The one-time Weather Underground fugitive talks about his life as a political bogeyman. While Ayers (Teaching Toward Freedom: Moral Commitment and Ethical Action in the Classroom, 2004, etc.) may be just as radical in his politics as ever, in temperament, the years, fatherhood and a distinguished career as a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago seem to have mellowed him--a bit. "I'm genetically wired to speak up and speak out, and not always with considered judgment," he admits. However, it's not his outspokenness against militarism, racism, imperialism and other isms associated with the status quo that has drawn Ayers often unwittingly (not to say, unwillingly) into the national political spotlight. Oftentimes, fate has played a hand--on September 11, 2001, for example, when the New York Times by chance ran an article on Ayers' then newly published memoirs of his radical past Fugitive Days under the title "No Regrets for a Love of Explosives." The appearance of the article the morning the Twin Towers fell saddled Ayers in the minds of an influential portion of the media (both liberal and conservative) with the epithet "unrepentant terrorist" and made him too hot to handle for many bookstores, education conferences and college campuses. During his first presidential campaign, Barack Obama's proximity to Ayers as a neighbor and occasional colleague was brutally, albeit ineffectively, cited by both Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin as evidence of the future president's own alleged dangerous radicalism. Despite his notoriety earning him death threats, canceled invitations and the indignity of being denied the honorific "emeritus" by his university upon his retirement, the author is surprisingly bemused, and often charmingly amusing, about his predicament. His writing is thoughtful, penetratingly insightful and marvelously lacking in self-pity. No matter how they feel about his politics, readers of this memoir should find the author's humanity irresistible.

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Starred review from September 15, 2013
This compelling sequel to Ayers' Fugitive Dayspublished on September 11, 2001describes the author's chaotic life after he and his wife, Bernadette Dohrn, became the topic and target of conversation during Barack Obama's first run for the presidency. Accused of being a domestic terrorist, Ayers, a popular professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, learned to navigate his new role as the nation's public enemy. He begins his story in April 2008, when he was watching the presidential primary debate between Hillary Clinton and Obama with a dozen of his graduate students, and one of the debate moderators, George Stephanopoulos, asked Obama to explain his friendship with Ayers, a member of the radical 1960s Weather Underground. Ayers describes the nightmares that ensued: hate mail, death threats, canceled lectures, being denied entry into Canada. He owns up to his activities as an unrepentant terrorist with the Underground but points out no one was killed or harmed: Our notoriety, then and now, outstripped our activity. Demonized and blacklisted, Ayers maintains not only his sanity but also his humor. When a reporter notes that he doesn't look like a real Weatherman, Ayers laughs and asks her what a real Weatherman looks like. A wonderful homage to free speech.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)