Book Party! You’re All Invited (You Can Even Come in Your Pajamas)

On Tuesday June 8 at 6 p.m. Pacific time, City Lights Books will be hosting a Zoom party for me and sister/coauthor Margaret Talbot — and you’re all invited. Come as you are and bring your own beverage. You can register for the party — which will feature a candid conversation between Margaret and me — here.

By the Light of Burning Dreams is my last history book — and I couldn’t have finished this one without Margaret’s help, as well as her husband, author Arthur Allen. It was a family affair, at first made necessary by my stroke in November 2017 as I was preparing to write the book. But as I healed, the collaboration became a source of great joy to me. Writing is a lonely grind, so it was wonderful to work for the first time with Margaret and Art. The delay in the book’s publication also made the book even more timely, as a new generation of protest has come powerfully alive.

By the Light of Burning Dreams has already received a lot of enthusiastic advance reviews. But I look forward to a dialogue with readers — including those of you who joined with a younger version of me in making this radical history, and with younger activists who will hopefully learn from our mistakes as well as our achievements. We moved America forward in many ways; my only regret, to paraphrase the late great novelist Robert Stone, is that we did not triumph completely.

But I trust that the warts-and-all stories of the revolutionary leaders we profile in the book will both inspire and enlighten, including Bobby Seale and Huey Newton of the Black Panthers; Dennis Banks, Russell Means and Madonna Thunder Hawk of the American Indian Movement; Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda of the Vietnam peace movement; and Heather Booth and the women of the underground feminist abortion collective known as Jane.

See you at the party.