From the bestselling author ofPublic EnemiesandThe Big Rich, anexplosive account of the decade-long battle between the FBI and thehomegrown revolutionary movements of the 1970s
The Weathermen. The Symbionese LiberationArmy. The FALN. The Black Liberation Army.The names seem quaint now, when not forgottenaltogether. But there was a time inAmerica, during the 1970s, when bombings by domestic underground groups were a daily occurrence. The FBI combated these and other groups as nodes in asingle revolutionary underground, dedicated to theviolent overthrow of the American government.
In Days of Rage, Bryan Burrough re-creates an atmospherethat seems almost unbelievable just forty yearslater, conjuring a time of native-born radicals,most of them "nice middle-class kids," smugglingbombs into skyscrapers and detonating them insidethe Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol, at a Boston courthouse and a Wall Street restaurant packed withlunchtime diners. The FBI's fevered response included the formation of a secret task force called Squad 47, dedicated to hunting the groups down and rolling them up. But Squad 47 itself broke many laws in its attempts to bring the revolutionaries to justice, and its efforts ultimately ended in fiasco.
Drawing on revelatory interviews with members of the underground and the FBI whospeak about their experiences for the first time,Days of Rageis a mesmerizing book that takes us into the hearts and minds ofhomegrown terrorists and federal agents alikeand weaves their stories into a spellbinding secrethistory of the 1970s.
