num_pages: 752
description: Subversives traces the FBIs secret involvement with three iconic figures who clashed at Berkeley during the 1960s: the ambitious neophyte politician Ronald Reagan the fierce but fragile radical Mario Savio and the liberal university president Clark Kerr. Through these converging narratives the award-winning investigative reporter Seth Rosenfeld tells a dramatic and disturbing story of FBI surveillance illegal break-ins infiltration planted news stories poison-pen letters and secret detention lists all centered on the nation's leading public university. Rosenfeld vividly evokes the campus counterculture as he reveals how the FBIs covert operationsled by Reagans friend J. Edgar Hooverhelped ignite an era of protest undermine the Democrats and benefit Reagan personally and politically.The FBI spent more than $1 million trying to block the release of the secret files on which Subversives is based but Rosenfeld compelled the bureau to reveal more than 300000 pages providing an extraordinary view of what the government was up to during a turning point in our nation.Part history part biography and part police procedural Subversives reads like a true-crime mystery as it provides a fresh look at the legacy of the 1960s sheds new light on one of Americas most popular presidents and tells a cautionary tale about the dangers of unchecked secrecy and power.
language: English
title: Subversives: The FBI's War on Student Radicals, and Reagan's Rise to Power
publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux