Exceptional

First of all: how can the overall score be five stars but the two individual categories 'performance' and 'story' only be four out of five? Well, I always prefer is memoirs and biographies are performed by the writer, as it often feels like their direct connection to the material more than makes up for any shortfall in performance, far exceeding the benefit of the poise and polish brought by a seasoned performer. Jeff Woodman is great, and the work doesn't suffer at all from being in his hands, I simply would have loved to hear these words from Bill.

The author chooses to confine the story mostly to the period 1965 to 1975, and that's fine. But it means that the book deliberately doesn't cover anything around the way that the social memory of Ayers and his actions dragged him in to the national conversation of the 2008 presidential campaign. Nor does it cover the Brinks truck robbery and the huge fallout which dredged up some of the same moral questions from all of those years prior. The biggest downside in terms of story is the complete omission of other actions that were pending at the time of the townhouse and the heavy abridgement of the conversations that followed.

This is a decision which serves to frame Robbins and Gold as outliers and the selection of action against Fort Dix as anomalous compared to the other symbolic targets that were approached. Of course, It might be possible that that was the case, but the lack of discussion does little to settle the argument. It is absolutely proper that a lot of what any of the underground knows about the logistics of who did what - or of who was planning to do what before the course of the movement was changed - goes with them, silently, to the grave. However, I do think that there was room for more discussion that would allow the listener to understand what was happening in the townhouse in the context of the wider movement.

This book is staggeringly well written, its language is by turns fiery, thoughtful, persuasive and beautiful. I have thoroughly enjoyed it and am certain it will reward at least one repeat listen.

If I could suggest one improvement, it would be the inclusion of a PDF reading list containing all the books he mentions along the way.

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