A Radical Line: From the Labor Movement to the Weather Underground, One Family's Century of Conscience
FormerNew York Newsdayreporter Jones was only four years old when the FBI burst into his family's Bronx apartment to arrest his parents: members of the violent, left-wing Weather Underground, they had spent the 1970s hiding from federal authorities. In fact, Jones recounts in his debut book, they had fallen in love while staying at the same safe house in the Catskills. Eleanor had become radicalized in 1968 while a law student at Columbia University; Jeff helped Dr. Timothy Leary, the LSD guru, escape from prison. Their radical roots went deep, as this engaging family history reveals. Both of Jones's maternal grandparents were Communist Party members; his grandfather pled the Fifth Amendment when House Committee on Un-American Activities grilled him in the 1950s. Jones's paternal grandfather had spent WWII in an army work camp as a conscientious objector. Jones effectively elucidates the personal dramas, often drawing on FBI files for background info. In giving his parents' story such completeness, however, he offers little hint of how fully their values were passed on to his own generation, giving the book's ending a somewhat abrupt feel. Strictly speaking, Jones's parents were in league with terrorists, but he infuses their politics with a crucial humanity that makes their path a little more understandable, perhaps even sympathetic.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.