“Exhilarating, inspiring”… The Advance Reviews Continue to Shine for Our New Book

A starred review in Booklist… a rave review in Publishers Weekly. (That’s where the “exhilarating” blurb comes from.) By the Light of Burning Dreams, the new book by my sister Margaret Talbot (of The New Yorker magazine) and I, is off to a wonderful start, in advance of its June 8 publication by HarperCollins.

The book chronicles dramatic turning points in the lives of revolutionary heroes from the 1960s and ‘70s — including Bobby Seale and Huey Newton of the Black Panthers; Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda of the Vietnam antiwar movement; Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta if the United Farm Workers crusade; John Lennon and Yoko Ono and their anti-Nixon peace campaign; Heather Booth and the women of Jane, the underground feminist abortion clinic; and Dennis Banks, Madonna Thunder Hawk and Russell Means of the American Indian Movement.

We interviewed many of these iconic radical leaders. (Dennis Banks died shortly after I spoke with him — look for my forthcoming article about that interview and Banks’s startling revelation about how President Nixon and Marlon Brando saved him and his fellow Native warriors from a second Wounded Knee massacre). In telling these men and women’s dramatic stories, we did not shy from evaluating their strengths and weaknesses as leaders. But, in the end, I came to feel the same way as novelist Robert Stone — another veteran of these wild times. The only thing he regretted, Stone wrote near the end of his life, was his movement’s failure to win.

Yes, these heroes of the “Second American Revolution,” as we call it, moved the country forward socially and culturally. But we failed to take political power. Our radical generation must fully understand our triumphs and tragedies and pass along this wisdom to the next generation of activists.

I think By the Light of Burning Dreams is a well-timed history lesson. It’s also a damn good read. The Talbots know how to write. Just saying…

You can pre-order the book from an independent bookstore here.