Dangerous, Dirty, Violent and Young

The son of the FBI's most wanted woman tells the electrifying, heart-rending story of a childhood on the run – and a half-century of revolutionary struggle in America

We all grapple with a past that defines us: culture, religion, a family story. But what happens when you inherit a revolution?

Zayd Ayers Dohrn was born without a birth certificate. His parents had gone underground after a decade committed to violent revolution against racial injustice and the Vietnam war; his mother co-founded a group called the Weathermen, allies of the Black Panthers, and replaced Angela Davis on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List. Zayd’s parents assured him that his birth marked a clean break with the past, an end to radical action. But, as Dohrn discovers in this explosive memoir, this version of the family story isn’t entirely true.

A masterpiece of personal and social history, Children of the Revolution offers a page-turning account of an infamous family and their life in hiding. As a work of deeply researched history, it also brilliantly retells the political battles of the ‘60s and ‘70s, while reckoning with the emotional damage the Weather Underground inflicted on their victims, their children and themselves. As it examines the complex inheritance of political ideology, it asks a much bigger question: about how a child can survive when the place they feel safest – with their family – also puts them in danger.