Synopsis
From red-diaper baby to fan of Newt Gingrich, David Horowitz returns with his own personal chapter in the "God that Failed" saga of the Western Left.
| Details | | Publication Date: | 1997-01-01 |
| Size | | Length: | 468 pages | | Height: | 9.5 in | | Width: | 7.0 in | | Thickness: | 1.8 in | | Weight: | 28.8 oz |
Publisher's Note
In a narrative that possesses both remarkable political importance and extraordinary literary power, David Horowitz tells the story of his startling political odyssey from Sixties radical to Nineties conservative. A political document of our times, Radical Son traces three generations of one American family's infatuation with the radical left from the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 to the collapse of the Marxist empire six decades later. David Horowitz was one of the founders of the New Left and an editor of Ramparts, the magazine that set the intellectual and revolutionary tone for the movement. From his vantage point at the center of the action, he populates Radical Son with vivid portraits of people who made the radical decade, while unmaking America at the same time. We are introduced to an aged Bertrand Russell, the world-famous philosopher and godson of John Stuart Mill, who in his nineties became America's scourge, organizing a War Crimes Tribunal over the war in Vietnam. There is Tom Hayden, the radical Everyman who promoted guerrilla warfare in America's cities in the Sixties, married film legend Jane Fonda, and became a Democratic state senator when his revolutions failed. We meet Huey Newton, a street hustler and murderer who founded a black militia that became the Sixties' most resonant symbol of black power and black militance. Horowitz's encounter with Newton and his Black Panthers, the most celebrated radical group of the Sixties, becomes the focal point of the story when a brutal murder committed by the Panthers changes his life forever, prompting the profound "second thoughts" that eventually led him to become an intellectual leader of conservatism and its most prominentactivist in Hollywood.
One of America's premier political biographers tells the story of his transformation from radical sixties leftist to conservative activist, and in the process provides a powerful moral history of our times.
Industry Reviews
"In this engrossing memoir, Mr. Horowitz atones for his own blindness and tries to make the rest of us see what too many others have covered up."
Wall Street Journal - Daniel J. Silver (02/03/1997)
"With 'Radical Son', Mr. Horowitz has written a courageous book, full of self-revelation and with a willingness to expose his own frailties in the most sensitive areas of sex and family."
New York Times Book Review - Richard Gid Powers (02/16/1997)
"The most remarkable testament of its kind since Whittaker Chambers' 'Witness'. A riveting work of literary distinction from the first page to the last."
American Spectator - Mark Falcoff
"Horowitz has had more than his share of heartbreak, personal and political, and his memoir is an often moving, sometimes infuriating account of a life devoted to the best intentions but producing bitter results."
San Francisco Chronicle Book Review - Michael J. Ybarra (03/23/1997)
"Regardless of one's opinion on his present politics, Horowitz's searching reminiscences are a valuable contribution to the literature of dissent."
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