Fugitive Days: A Memoir.(Review)

Fugitive Days: A Memoir

By Bill Ayers. Beacon Press, 295 pages, $24.00

THIS IS BOTH AN ADMIRABLE book and a ludicrous one. Bill Ayers was one of those 1960s radicals who, for better or worse, defined the term. Son of a utility-company executive, he grew up in an affluent white suburb outside Chicago, cruised indifferently through prep school, and then was jolted awake in college by the moral urgency of the civil-rights movement and the horrors of Vietnam. By 1965, a young radical was something to be.

At first, Ayers sought out small approaches to making big changes. ...