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By the Light of Burning Dreams: The Triumphs and Tragedies of the Second American Revolution
New York Times bestselling author David Talbot and New Yorker journalist Margaret Talbot illuminate “America’s second revolutionary generation” in this gripping history of one of the most dynamic eras of the twentieth century—brought to life through seven defining radical moments that offer vibrant parallels and lessons for today.
The political landscape of the 1960s and 1970s was perhaps one of the most tumultuous in this country's history, shaped by the fight for civil rights, women’s liberation, Black power, and the end to the Vietnam War. In many ways, this second American revolution was a belated fulfillment of the betrayed promises of the first, striving to extend the full protections of the Bill of Rights to non-white, non-male, non-elite Americans excluded by the nation’s founders.
Based on exclusive interviews, original documents, and archival research, By the Light of Burning Dreams explores critical moments in the lives of a diverse cast of iconoclastic leaders of the twentieth century radical movement: Bobby Seale of the Black Panthers; Heather Booth and the Jane Collective, the first underground feminist abortion clinic; Vietnam War peace activists Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda; Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta and the United Farm Workers; Craig Rodwell and the Gay Pride movement; Dennis Banks, Madonna Thunder Hawk, Russell Means and the warriors of Wounded Knee; and John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s politics of stardom. Margaret and David Talbot reveal the epiphanies that galvanized these modern revolutionaries and created unexpected connections and alliances between individual movements and across race, class, and gender divides.
America is still absorbing—and reacting against—the revolutionary forces of this tumultuous period. The change these leaders enacted demanded much of American society and the human imagination. By the Light of Burning Dreams is an immersive and compelling chronicle of seven lighting rods of change and the generation that engraved itself in American narrative—and set the stage for those today, fighting to bend forward the arc of history.
By the Light of Burning Dreams includes a 16-page black-and-white photo insert.
The political landscape of the 1960s and 1970s was perhaps one of the most tumultuous in this country's history, shaped by the fight for civil rights, women’s liberation, Black power, and the end to the Vietnam War. In many ways, this second American revolution was a belated fulfillment of the betrayed promises of the first, striving to extend the full protections of the Bill of Rights to non-white, non-male, non-elite Americans excluded by the nation’s founders.
Based on exclusive interviews, original documents, and archival research, By the Light of Burning Dreams explores critical moments in the lives of a diverse cast of iconoclastic leaders of the twentieth century radical movement: Bobby Seale of the Black Panthers; Heather Booth and the Jane Collective, the first underground feminist abortion clinic; Vietnam War peace activists Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda; Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta and the United Farm Workers; Craig Rodwell and the Gay Pride movement; Dennis Banks, Madonna Thunder Hawk, Russell Means and the warriors of Wounded Knee; and John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s politics of stardom. Margaret and David Talbot reveal the epiphanies that galvanized these modern revolutionaries and created unexpected connections and alliances between individual movements and across race, class, and gender divides.
America is still absorbing—and reacting against—the revolutionary forces of this tumultuous period. The change these leaders enacted demanded much of American society and the human imagination. By the Light of Burning Dreams is an immersive and compelling chronicle of seven lighting rods of change and the generation that engraved itself in American narrative—and set the stage for those today, fighting to bend forward the arc of history.
By the Light of Burning Dreams includes a 16-page black-and-white photo insert.
400 pages, Hardcover
First published June 8, 2021
31 people are currently reading
1359 people want to read
About the author
David Talbot
44 books295 followersDavid Talbot is an American progressive journalist, author and media executive. He is the founder, former CEO and editor-in-chief, an early web magazine, Salon. Talbot founded Salon in 1995. The magazine gained a large following and broke several major national stories. It was described by Entertainment Weekly as one of the Net's "few genuine must-reads".
Since leaving Salon, Talbot has researched and written on the Kennedy assassination and other areas of what he calls "hidden history." Talbot has worked as a senior editor for Mother Jones magazine and a features editor for The San Francisco Examiner, and has written for Time magazine, The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, and other publications.
Talbot was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. He attended Harvard Boys School, but did not graduate after falling afoul of the school's headmaster and ROTC program during the Vietnam War. After graduating from the University of California at Santa Cruz, he returned to Los Angeles, where he wrote a history of the Hollywood Left, "Creative Differences", and freelanced for Crawdaddy, Rolling Stone, and other magazines. He later was hired by Environmental Action Foundation in Washington, D.C. to write "Power and Light," a book about the politics of energy. After he returned to California, he was hired as an editor at Mother Jones magazine, and later, by San Francisco Examiner publisher Will Hearst to edit the newspaper's Sunday magazine, Image. It was at the Examiner where Talbot developed the idea for Salon, convincing several of his newspaper colleagues to join him and jump ship into the brave new world of web publishing.
Since leaving Salon, Talbot has researched and written on the Kennedy assassination and other areas of what he calls "hidden history." Talbot has worked as a senior editor for Mother Jones magazine and a features editor for The San Francisco Examiner, and has written for Time magazine, The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, and other publications.
Talbot was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. He attended Harvard Boys School, but did not graduate after falling afoul of the school's headmaster and ROTC program during the Vietnam War. After graduating from the University of California at Santa Cruz, he returned to Los Angeles, where he wrote a history of the Hollywood Left, "Creative Differences", and freelanced for Crawdaddy, Rolling Stone, and other magazines. He later was hired by Environmental Action Foundation in Washington, D.C. to write "Power and Light," a book about the politics of energy. After he returned to California, he was hired as an editor at Mother Jones magazine, and later, by San Francisco Examiner publisher Will Hearst to edit the newspaper's Sunday magazine, Image. It was at the Examiner where Talbot developed the idea for Salon, convincing several of his newspaper colleagues to join him and jump ship into the brave new world of web publishing.
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July 28, 2021Americans have short memories. Our failure to read history leads us to believe that nothing in our past could equal the dangers posed by the crises that threaten us today. We forget those times when the nation’s very existence hung in the balance. 1776, when the American project might well have foundered in its infancy. 1861, when the country shattered into two warring states. 1941, when we entered a global war we could have lost. And 1971. Then, movements for radical change erupted in every corner and 2,500 terrorist bombs went off in the United States. More than 300,000 US military personnel served in Vietnam as the year dawned. And Richard Nixon sat scheming to hold onto power in the White House.
In By the Light of Burning Dreams, David Talbot and Margaret Talbot take us back to that tumultuous time fifty years ago. They trace “the sweeping social and cultural transformations of the 1960s and ’70s”—the second American Revolution.
Movements for radical change raised the hope of millions
“This second revolution,” they write, “forced the country to change its assumptions about race, war and peace, gender, sexual orientation, reproductive rights, labor justice, consumer responsibility, and environmental protection.” It’s a painful story to read because it highlights how sadly incomplete that revolution proved to be. And it brings to mind the ferocity of the Right-Wing reaction that followed later in the 1970s and beyond, setting the stage for the sad state of the American scene today.
A second American Revolution comprising seven interconnected movements for radical change
The Talbot siblings tell their tale by profiling some of the major protagonists of the movement behind that second revolution. A handful of them—Cesar Chavez (1927-93), Tom Hayden (1939-2016), John Lennon (1940-80), Dennis Banks (1937-2017)—are still widely recognizable today. Others are less well remembered. In the seven chapters that follow their introduction, the Talbots successively spotlight some of the most compelling personalities of the 1960s and 70s.” Each chapter,” they write, “focuses on climactic events or turning points in the lives of radical leaders who were driving the” change. Their account encompasses the movements for economic democracy, Black Power, abortion rights, the farmworkers’ struggle, gay liberation, peace, and Native American rights. And they make clear in the telling that these movements often overlapped and interconnected.
Economic democracy
Chapter One highlights Tom Hayden, Jane Fonda, and Berkeley’s Red Family, with a focus on the life and work of author and political strategist Tom Hayden. The Talbots’ account rests in large part on an interview with former Red Family leader Anne Weills, now a prominent progressive Oakland attorney. But the story’s all there: the Port Huron Statement, Students for a Democratic Society, Hayden’s expulsion from the Red Family, the Chicago Eight, his storied marriage to Jane Fonda, the Campaign for Economic Democracy, and Hayden’s eighteen-year service in the California State Legislature. When historians point to the movements for radical change that roiled the United States half a century ago, they often place the drive for peace and economic democracy at the top of the list.
Black Power
Bobby Seale (1936-), Huey Newton (1942-89), Eldridge Cleaver (1935-98), and the Black Panther Party are the subject of the book’s second chapter. In interviews with Bobby Seale, the authors follow the history of the Black Panther Party from its origins in Oakland in 1965 to its dissolution in 1982. The emphasis in their account is on Seale himself and on Newton and Cleaver, but other prominent figures enter the narrative as well. Among them are Fred Hampton (1948-69), mercilessly gunned down by government agents in Chicago in 1969, and Bobby Hutton (1950-68), shot while surrendering to Oakland police in 1958. Cleaver’s impressive wife, Kathleen Cleaver (1945-) and Ericka Huggins (1948-) also enter the tale. But, throughout, the story keeps returning to Seale, Newton, and Cleaver, who are described as “the heroic realization of [Frantz] Fanon‘s dream, the fusion of lumpen lethality and intellectual prowess.”
Abortion rights
In the third chapter, the spotlight moves to legendary organizer and political strategist Heather Booth (1945-) and her seminal work in advancing the cause of reproductive choice. The authors use the emergence of the Jane Collective that Booth organized in Chicago as the jumping-off point for a discussion of the women’s liberation movement. The effort followed her active involvement beginning in high school in the civil rights movement through the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Booth’s illustrious later career is less well portrayed than Hayden’s. In later years, she has played a pivotal role in the political arena, founding the Midwest Academy and Citizen Action, organizing a massive nationwide African-American voter registration drive, and advising leading Democrats on strategy. Booth is the subject of a documentary film, Heather Booth: Changing the World.
The farmworkers’ struggle
Cesar Chavez (1927-93), Dolores Huerta (1930-), and their partnership in La Causa is the topic of the Talbots’ fourth chapter, which they entitle “The Martyr Complex.” The emphasis throughout is on these two remarkable human beings, but unsurprisingly the authors dwell more on the cinematic Gandhian figure of Chavez. Older readers will remember the hunger strikes, Senator Bobby Kennedy’s well-publicized visit, and the grape boycott of the late 1960s. Most of us are less familiar with the decline of the United Farm Workers union as Chavez placed numerous relatives in key positions, and that episode in Chavez’s life is barely mentioned. But his cofounder, Dolores Huerta, has earned a place for herself in the limelight in the quarter-century that has elapsed since his death. At age 91, she continues to speak out forcefully for social justice.
Gay liberation
In a fifth chapter, the authors advance a perspective on the history of the gay liberation movement that is unfamiliar to most readers. The 1969 Stonewall Rebellion is usually noted as the launching point. But the Talbots reach further back in history and identify New York’s Oscar Wilde Bookshop, established in 1967, as the centerpiece in a struggle that began in the 1950s. In their account, the store’s founder, Craig Rodwell (1940-93), plays a seminal role. Rodwell organized New York City’s first Gay Pride demonstration that has morphed into today’s massive marches involving millions in the movement for LGBTQ rights.
Peace
In the book’s most surprising chapter, the Talbots write about “John Lennon, Yoko Ono, and the Politics of Stardom.” They assert that “with the exception of the movie star Jane Fonda, no popular artists became as associated with the revolutionary uprisings of the time. And no entertainer of John Lennon’s status struck deeper fear and loathing into Richard Nixon’s paranoid presidency and its repressive security machinery.” As the authors note, Lennon and Ono also supplied funds to support others active in the movements for change. But it’s hard to pin down or understand why the couple could be singled out in the company of the leaders of the movements for radical change who are profiled elsewhere here. By comparison, they come across as frivolous and unfocused.
Native American rights
In the book’s final chapter, the center of attention shifts to Dennis Banks, Madonna Thunder Hawk (1940-), Russell Means (1939-2012), and “the Warriors of Wounded Knee.” There, in “the most courageous and sustained Native American uprising in the twentieth century,” the three profiled in this chapter led a force of 200 in a seventy-one day occupation of a site near Wounded Knee Creek. There in South Dakota eighty-three years earlier, the US 7th Cavalry Regiment massacred as many as 300 men, women, and children on the Lakota Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.
On a personal note
It was unsettling. I know, or knew, most of the men and women whose names appear in this book. Tom Hayden. Heather Booth. Russell Means. Cesar Chavez. Harvey Milk. And so many others, both major figures and minor. A few were friends, though none of them close. Most were merely acquaintances. A few, such as Dr. King, I’d met in passing. But as I read I felt more and more like Zelig, though I was never in the frame. It was eerie learning new things about people I thought I’d understood as I now observed them through the prism of history. So I owe a note of thanks to David and Margaret Talbot for helping me relive the episodes in my life that had dimmed with the passage of time. I just wish that second revolution had led to legislation that would stand the test of time.
About the authors
David Talbot (1951-) is a journalist and independent historian who has served as a senior editor for Mother Jones magazine and features editor for the San Francisco Examiner. He has written six nonfiction books, of which this is the most recent, as well as numerous articles for The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, and other periodicals. In 1995, he founded and served as editor-in-chief of the pioneering online magazine, Salon. Talbot’s father and his siblings, including his sister Margaret Talbot, have all achieved distinction.
Margaret Talbot is a staff writer for the The New Yorker and has written for The New Republic,The New York Times Magazine, and The Atlantic Monthly. By the Light of Burning Dreams is her second book. Her first, The Entertainer: Movies, Magic, and My Father’s Twentieth Century, profiled her and David Talbot’s famous father, a founder of the Screen Actors Guild. The Acknowledgments for this book reveal that Arthur Allen, Margaret’s husband, “wrote the chapter on Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, and the United Farm Workers.”
In By the Light of Burning Dreams, David Talbot and Margaret Talbot take us back to that tumultuous time fifty years ago. They trace “the sweeping social and cultural transformations of the 1960s and ’70s”—the second American Revolution.
Movements for radical change raised the hope of millions
“This second revolution,” they write, “forced the country to change its assumptions about race, war and peace, gender, sexual orientation, reproductive rights, labor justice, consumer responsibility, and environmental protection.” It’s a painful story to read because it highlights how sadly incomplete that revolution proved to be. And it brings to mind the ferocity of the Right-Wing reaction that followed later in the 1970s and beyond, setting the stage for the sad state of the American scene today.
A second American Revolution comprising seven interconnected movements for radical change
The Talbot siblings tell their tale by profiling some of the major protagonists of the movement behind that second revolution. A handful of them—Cesar Chavez (1927-93), Tom Hayden (1939-2016), John Lennon (1940-80), Dennis Banks (1937-2017)—are still widely recognizable today. Others are less well remembered. In the seven chapters that follow their introduction, the Talbots successively spotlight some of the most compelling personalities of the 1960s and 70s.” Each chapter,” they write, “focuses on climactic events or turning points in the lives of radical leaders who were driving the” change. Their account encompasses the movements for economic democracy, Black Power, abortion rights, the farmworkers’ struggle, gay liberation, peace, and Native American rights. And they make clear in the telling that these movements often overlapped and interconnected.
Economic democracy
Chapter One highlights Tom Hayden, Jane Fonda, and Berkeley’s Red Family, with a focus on the life and work of author and political strategist Tom Hayden. The Talbots’ account rests in large part on an interview with former Red Family leader Anne Weills, now a prominent progressive Oakland attorney. But the story’s all there: the Port Huron Statement, Students for a Democratic Society, Hayden’s expulsion from the Red Family, the Chicago Eight, his storied marriage to Jane Fonda, the Campaign for Economic Democracy, and Hayden’s eighteen-year service in the California State Legislature. When historians point to the movements for radical change that roiled the United States half a century ago, they often place the drive for peace and economic democracy at the top of the list.
Black Power
Bobby Seale (1936-), Huey Newton (1942-89), Eldridge Cleaver (1935-98), and the Black Panther Party are the subject of the book’s second chapter. In interviews with Bobby Seale, the authors follow the history of the Black Panther Party from its origins in Oakland in 1965 to its dissolution in 1982. The emphasis in their account is on Seale himself and on Newton and Cleaver, but other prominent figures enter the narrative as well. Among them are Fred Hampton (1948-69), mercilessly gunned down by government agents in Chicago in 1969, and Bobby Hutton (1950-68), shot while surrendering to Oakland police in 1958. Cleaver’s impressive wife, Kathleen Cleaver (1945-) and Ericka Huggins (1948-) also enter the tale. But, throughout, the story keeps returning to Seale, Newton, and Cleaver, who are described as “the heroic realization of [Frantz] Fanon‘s dream, the fusion of lumpen lethality and intellectual prowess.”
Abortion rights
In the third chapter, the spotlight moves to legendary organizer and political strategist Heather Booth (1945-) and her seminal work in advancing the cause of reproductive choice. The authors use the emergence of the Jane Collective that Booth organized in Chicago as the jumping-off point for a discussion of the women’s liberation movement. The effort followed her active involvement beginning in high school in the civil rights movement through the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Booth’s illustrious later career is less well portrayed than Hayden’s. In later years, she has played a pivotal role in the political arena, founding the Midwest Academy and Citizen Action, organizing a massive nationwide African-American voter registration drive, and advising leading Democrats on strategy. Booth is the subject of a documentary film, Heather Booth: Changing the World.
The farmworkers’ struggle
Cesar Chavez (1927-93), Dolores Huerta (1930-), and their partnership in La Causa is the topic of the Talbots’ fourth chapter, which they entitle “The Martyr Complex.” The emphasis throughout is on these two remarkable human beings, but unsurprisingly the authors dwell more on the cinematic Gandhian figure of Chavez. Older readers will remember the hunger strikes, Senator Bobby Kennedy’s well-publicized visit, and the grape boycott of the late 1960s. Most of us are less familiar with the decline of the United Farm Workers union as Chavez placed numerous relatives in key positions, and that episode in Chavez’s life is barely mentioned. But his cofounder, Dolores Huerta, has earned a place for herself in the limelight in the quarter-century that has elapsed since his death. At age 91, she continues to speak out forcefully for social justice.
Gay liberation
In a fifth chapter, the authors advance a perspective on the history of the gay liberation movement that is unfamiliar to most readers. The 1969 Stonewall Rebellion is usually noted as the launching point. But the Talbots reach further back in history and identify New York’s Oscar Wilde Bookshop, established in 1967, as the centerpiece in a struggle that began in the 1950s. In their account, the store’s founder, Craig Rodwell (1940-93), plays a seminal role. Rodwell organized New York City’s first Gay Pride demonstration that has morphed into today’s massive marches involving millions in the movement for LGBTQ rights.
Peace
In the book’s most surprising chapter, the Talbots write about “John Lennon, Yoko Ono, and the Politics of Stardom.” They assert that “with the exception of the movie star Jane Fonda, no popular artists became as associated with the revolutionary uprisings of the time. And no entertainer of John Lennon’s status struck deeper fear and loathing into Richard Nixon’s paranoid presidency and its repressive security machinery.” As the authors note, Lennon and Ono also supplied funds to support others active in the movements for change. But it’s hard to pin down or understand why the couple could be singled out in the company of the leaders of the movements for radical change who are profiled elsewhere here. By comparison, they come across as frivolous and unfocused.
Native American rights
In the book’s final chapter, the center of attention shifts to Dennis Banks, Madonna Thunder Hawk (1940-), Russell Means (1939-2012), and “the Warriors of Wounded Knee.” There, in “the most courageous and sustained Native American uprising in the twentieth century,” the three profiled in this chapter led a force of 200 in a seventy-one day occupation of a site near Wounded Knee Creek. There in South Dakota eighty-three years earlier, the US 7th Cavalry Regiment massacred as many as 300 men, women, and children on the Lakota Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.
On a personal note
It was unsettling. I know, or knew, most of the men and women whose names appear in this book. Tom Hayden. Heather Booth. Russell Means. Cesar Chavez. Harvey Milk. And so many others, both major figures and minor. A few were friends, though none of them close. Most were merely acquaintances. A few, such as Dr. King, I’d met in passing. But as I read I felt more and more like Zelig, though I was never in the frame. It was eerie learning new things about people I thought I’d understood as I now observed them through the prism of history. So I owe a note of thanks to David and Margaret Talbot for helping me relive the episodes in my life that had dimmed with the passage of time. I just wish that second revolution had led to legislation that would stand the test of time.
About the authors
David Talbot (1951-) is a journalist and independent historian who has served as a senior editor for Mother Jones magazine and features editor for the San Francisco Examiner. He has written six nonfiction books, of which this is the most recent, as well as numerous articles for The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, and other periodicals. In 1995, he founded and served as editor-in-chief of the pioneering online magazine, Salon. Talbot’s father and his siblings, including his sister Margaret Talbot, have all achieved distinction.
Margaret Talbot is a staff writer for the The New Yorker and has written for The New Republic,The New York Times Magazine, and The Atlantic Monthly. By the Light of Burning Dreams is her second book. Her first, The Entertainer: Movies, Magic, and My Father’s Twentieth Century, profiled her and David Talbot’s famous father, a founder of the Screen Actors Guild. The Acknowledgments for this book reveal that Arthur Allen, Margaret’s husband, “wrote the chapter on Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, and the United Farm Workers.”
September 8, 2021
This review first appeared on my blog - https://nsfordwriter.com - on 2nd September 2021.
Essential reading if you want an overview of the civil rights movements in 1960s and 70s America. I would also recommend this book if you watched the film The Trial of the Chicago 7, as it covers some of the same material but in the context of the broader wave of anti-war protests and various liberation movements. This book also caught my eye on the library catalogue because I'd heard of the American Revolution but hadn't previously heard of the 60s and 70s described as the second one.
Although this is a history book, it's written in an accessible, journalistic way and uses a lot of material from interviews and archives to present a well-structured narrative. It filled some gaps in my knowledge; I'm assuming that people my age from the US would know more than I did to begin with, but as a Brit my understanding of the subject was limited to African American civil rights (which I learned about at college), the internet reading I did about the Chicago 7 (or 8) after watching the film, and some knowledge about Stonewall. It goes without saying that I already knew about Martin Luther King from a young age, as we learn about him at school.
People are at the heart of this book. The authors focus on figures such as Tom Hayden, Jane Fonda, Bobby Seale, Huey Newton, Heather Booth, Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, Craig Rodwell, John Lennon, Dennis Banks, Madonna Thunder Hawk, and more. Their characters and backgrounds are examined and the way they worked with each other. This is of course a book biased towards these figures as pioneers and supporters of movements which intersected with each other. They clashed with the government and were infiltrated by the FBI. Writing from today's perspective, no other view of the era would be possible. However, the character flaws and the tensions within the groups are laid bare, because they were all human - some of them could be described as heroes for the causes they believed in, but not saints.
If you already have a good knowledge of the civil rights movements, you can still learn something from this book, as the authors have talked to some of the activists who are still around, so the content is up to date and we're seeing the parallels between today's world and the events of 40 to 50 years ago. The book also includes notes, an index and photo section.
Essential reading if you want an overview of the civil rights movements in 1960s and 70s America. I would also recommend this book if you watched the film The Trial of the Chicago 7, as it covers some of the same material but in the context of the broader wave of anti-war protests and various liberation movements. This book also caught my eye on the library catalogue because I'd heard of the American Revolution but hadn't previously heard of the 60s and 70s described as the second one.
Although this is a history book, it's written in an accessible, journalistic way and uses a lot of material from interviews and archives to present a well-structured narrative. It filled some gaps in my knowledge; I'm assuming that people my age from the US would know more than I did to begin with, but as a Brit my understanding of the subject was limited to African American civil rights (which I learned about at college), the internet reading I did about the Chicago 7 (or 8) after watching the film, and some knowledge about Stonewall. It goes without saying that I already knew about Martin Luther King from a young age, as we learn about him at school.
People are at the heart of this book. The authors focus on figures such as Tom Hayden, Jane Fonda, Bobby Seale, Huey Newton, Heather Booth, Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, Craig Rodwell, John Lennon, Dennis Banks, Madonna Thunder Hawk, and more. Their characters and backgrounds are examined and the way they worked with each other. This is of course a book biased towards these figures as pioneers and supporters of movements which intersected with each other. They clashed with the government and were infiltrated by the FBI. Writing from today's perspective, no other view of the era would be possible. However, the character flaws and the tensions within the groups are laid bare, because they were all human - some of them could be described as heroes for the causes they believed in, but not saints.
If you already have a good knowledge of the civil rights movements, you can still learn something from this book, as the authors have talked to some of the activists who are still around, so the content is up to date and we're seeing the parallels between today's world and the events of 40 to 50 years ago. The book also includes notes, an index and photo section.
January 20, 2022
By the Light of Burning Dreams: The Triumphs and Tragedies of the Second American Revolution by David Talbot and Margaret Talbot (HarperCollins 2021) (323.0973) (3609).
Authors David Talbott and Margaret Talbot are siblings who are senior enough to have lived through the ”second American revolution” of the 1960’s and 1970’s. This second revolution was driven collectively by the pent-up and fed-up demands of marginalized groups of U.S. citizens who were tired of being denied a full seat at the American table, so to speak.
The authors define the various revolutionary groups by their principal causes and interests, and the book is ordered in this fashion. The underlying principle that united these groups was their despair and disgust at the government which had historically ignored their pleas for protection of their civil rights to which they believed themselves to be constitutionally entitled.
To understand the book and this period in history, one must remember that the all-pervasive backdrop to this “second revolution” was the anti-war movement - the citizenry’s overwhelming (and non-negotiable) opposition to the Vietnam War and a demand for the immediate cessation of hostilities and withdrawal of US troops.
The principal groups driving this revolution included Blacks and other People of Color demanding long-denied equal civil rights and protections under the law; Native Americans were demanding respect, civil rights, and an end to encroachment by the government; women and feminists demanded access to safe and legal birth control methods including a woman’s right to choose abortion; gay citizens were demanding equal protection under the law and an end to harassment by the authorities; and migrant laborers and farmworkers were fed up with being treated like the Joads in The Grapes of Wrath.
Other important players in this drama were the young people who, led by the Students for Democratic Society and the Yippies, had become radicalized to the point that their voices could not be ignored. Finally, the authors also include a section on former Beatle John Lennon and other politically-outspoken celebrities who used fame as a platform to speak out in support of the causes.
The authors discuss at length some of the principal organizations of the time: the Black Panther Party, the Women of Jane and the WITCH party (“Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell”), the Weather Underground, and the Freedom Riders.
I turned two years old in 1960. I thus lived right through this tumultuous period as a kid, and this book clarified much of what I had missed.
There were two chapters that I found to be particularly salient and edifying. The first is the discussion about the Freedom Summer, and the second is the section about the “Women of Jane,” a radical rights group who assisted women in procuring (and which often actively performed) abortions in the pre-Roe v. Wade days.
The Freedom Summer discussion included a lengthy examination of the murders of three young civil rights organizers known as “Freedom Riders” in 1964 in Philadelphia (Neshoba County), Mississippi:
“The strategy that became known as Freedom Summer was hard-nosed and high risk; the country might be able to ignore the persecution of Black civil rights activists struggling against brutal disenfranchisement, but if White college students are subjected to the same treatment, the national press would be compelled to pay attention and the federal government might intervene in the state.” (p.118-119).
The bodies of the three kidnapped and murdered students (Andrew Goodman, James Cheney, and Michael Schwerner) were found on August 4, 1964. One of many heartbreaking facts that the authors pointed out is that Andrew Goodman, a student at Queens College in New York City, had only arrived in Mississippi the day before he was kidnapped and murdered. (p.122).
In the same chapter, the authors shared a horrifying fact that I had never heard: “While searching for Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner, investigators would find the bodies of eight Black men - some mutilated, or with hands bound, one a fourteen-year-old wearing a CORE T-shirt - for whom the authorities had not been bothering to search.” (p.122). I had never heard this jarring statement, and the authors’ meticulous index of notes omitted any citation or reference as to its basis. However, a few moments of research definitively confirmed that this incredible assertion is historically factual.
I admit that I had never heard of “The Women of Jane” before reading this. The “Janes,” as they call themselves, were pro-choice activists before the term pro-choice had been coined. The women of this organization covertly helped make safe abortions available to women who had no other alternative than a back-alley butcher in often unsafe and unsanitary conditions.
According to a pamphlet generated by the Women of Jane, “...[A]bortion is a safe, simple, relatively painless operation when performed by a trained person in clean conditions.” This remains critically important, for according to the authors, “Though one in four women will have an abortion in their lifetimes, the procedure remains politically contested and subject to constant legal challenges.” (p.155-56).
The Janes certainly had what might have been the all-time best slogan about responding to political and societal oppression: “If the Machine shortchanges you, kick it.” (p.133).
My rating: 7.5/10, finished 1/19/22 (3609).
September 25, 2021
a good overview of the turbulent Sixties by a pair of astute siblings. Well researched and well written, tackling Hayden/Fonda, Black Panthers, Women of Jane, United Farm Workers, Craig Russel founder of an early gay bookstore/gathering place, Lennon/Ono and the politics of stardom, and Wounded Knee and the AIM leaders: Dennis Banks, Russel Means and Madonna Thunder Hawk. It sparked memories and informed me of a lot of information that I did not realize.
June 22, 2021
This was a page turner from the start.
Siblings David and Margaret Talbot put forward a clear and compelling thesis: the American Revolution was (is?!?!) incomplete. When the founders delayed trying to build bridges across the bleeding cracks in the foundation of America in favor of short term order, they undermined that order.
The Talbots argue that progressives and revolutionaries of the 1960s and 1970s represent a Second American Revolution. One that seeks to deal with America’s settlement cracks not just by plugging them with spackle and covering the work over with paint—but by shining a light ON those cracks, in some cases, causing a total reevaluation of our structures.
For many readers, ironically, this may sound like a pretty modest or tame argument. Of course the liberal movements of the 60s and 70s sought to redress fundamental civic disparities.
For me, however, viewing these movements as extensions of Thomas Paine, the early abolitionists, and colonial business reformers, raises the stakes at risk in each of the book’s thrilling biographies.
That’s the other thing I very much enjoyed: the book’s breadth. Obviously, whenever you’re going for coverage, you might have to make concessions to depth depending upon how much space you have. And that’s true here. Each of these chapter subjects warrant entire studies. But the Talbots hit a near perfect balance between the two; they kept me reading hungrily while also giving me plenty of novel passages to take notes on.
In the list of subjects/biographies below, you’ll see many names with which you’re familiar. Two things though. First, even within these familiar stories—for me, I’ve done quite a bit of reading about the Black Panthers—the Talbots manage to uncover and convey new information, and for the most part, they’re not after hagiography here. For instance, in the aforementioned chapter on the Black Panthers, the authors substantively address how Newton’s mercurialism and Cleaver’s temper, domestic abuse, and struggles with drugs weakened the movements they helped foster. Look, we’re talking about, in David Talbot, one of the founders of Mother Jones. So let’s not pretend that what we’re reading is unbiased. But that’s silly. Everything IS biased; history written by the powerful was—for me—the FIRST history I was taught. To quote Bob Marley (and others), “Half the story has never been told.”
Second, there are many names I DIDN’T know. The chapters on Craig Rodwell, Dennis Banks, Russell Means, Madonna Thunder Hawk, Dolores Huerta, and Heather Booth and the Janes are revelatory.
The subjects of the individual chapters are as follows:
Vietnam/Red Scare/Cold War: Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda
Race: Bobby Seale, Huey Newton, Eldridge Cleaver and the Black Panthers
Feminism: Heather Booth and the Women of Jane
Labor Rights: Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta and La Causa
Gay Rights: Craig Rodwell and the Oscar Wilde Memorial Book Shop
Stardom and Peace: John Lennon and Yoko Ono
Native American Humanity: Dennis Banks, Madonna Thunder Hawk, Russell Means, and the Warriors of Wounded Knee
Siblings David and Margaret Talbot put forward a clear and compelling thesis: the American Revolution was (is?!?!) incomplete. When the founders delayed trying to build bridges across the bleeding cracks in the foundation of America in favor of short term order, they undermined that order.
The Talbots argue that progressives and revolutionaries of the 1960s and 1970s represent a Second American Revolution. One that seeks to deal with America’s settlement cracks not just by plugging them with spackle and covering the work over with paint—but by shining a light ON those cracks, in some cases, causing a total reevaluation of our structures.
For many readers, ironically, this may sound like a pretty modest or tame argument. Of course the liberal movements of the 60s and 70s sought to redress fundamental civic disparities.
For me, however, viewing these movements as extensions of Thomas Paine, the early abolitionists, and colonial business reformers, raises the stakes at risk in each of the book’s thrilling biographies.
That’s the other thing I very much enjoyed: the book’s breadth. Obviously, whenever you’re going for coverage, you might have to make concessions to depth depending upon how much space you have. And that’s true here. Each of these chapter subjects warrant entire studies. But the Talbots hit a near perfect balance between the two; they kept me reading hungrily while also giving me plenty of novel passages to take notes on.
In the list of subjects/biographies below, you’ll see many names with which you’re familiar. Two things though. First, even within these familiar stories—for me, I’ve done quite a bit of reading about the Black Panthers—the Talbots manage to uncover and convey new information, and for the most part, they’re not after hagiography here. For instance, in the aforementioned chapter on the Black Panthers, the authors substantively address how Newton’s mercurialism and Cleaver’s temper, domestic abuse, and struggles with drugs weakened the movements they helped foster. Look, we’re talking about, in David Talbot, one of the founders of Mother Jones. So let’s not pretend that what we’re reading is unbiased. But that’s silly. Everything IS biased; history written by the powerful was—for me—the FIRST history I was taught. To quote Bob Marley (and others), “Half the story has never been told.”
Second, there are many names I DIDN’T know. The chapters on Craig Rodwell, Dennis Banks, Russell Means, Madonna Thunder Hawk, Dolores Huerta, and Heather Booth and the Janes are revelatory.
The subjects of the individual chapters are as follows:
Vietnam/Red Scare/Cold War: Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda
Race: Bobby Seale, Huey Newton, Eldridge Cleaver and the Black Panthers
Feminism: Heather Booth and the Women of Jane
Labor Rights: Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta and La Causa
Gay Rights: Craig Rodwell and the Oscar Wilde Memorial Book Shop
Stardom and Peace: John Lennon and Yoko Ono
Native American Humanity: Dennis Banks, Madonna Thunder Hawk, Russell Means, and the Warriors of Wounded Knee
January 10, 2023
"Leadership, Honesty and Trust," Knox Book Beat in The Berkeley Times, Oct. 20, 2022.
David and Margaret Talbot’s By the Light of Burning Dreams gives us portraits of fourteen or more specific heroes and the movements and crisis points focusing on “climactic events or turning points in the lives” “from this second American Revolution” where their Triumphs and Tragedies occurred. There’s a tremendous amount of overlap in scenes, events and characters among Yippie Girl, The Activist's Media Handbook and Burning Dreams, but each is chronological “non-fiction” from different perspectives, voices and styles.
Gumbo’s “tall, blond, native Californian” “serious revolutionary” friend Anne Weills, for example, shows up as the “paramour” of post-Chicago 7 “flawed leader” and 2917 Ashby Avenue “Red Family” (Gumbo never used that term) resident Tom Hayden in the first chapter, “The Purity of Protest and the Complexity of Politics.” “Radical insurgents who broke into political office in the 1970s” is his category, and the Talbots call his relationship and political partnership with Jane Fonda “one of the most effective political unions in the history of the American Left.” This reflects their interests in cultural changes that brought her to him as antiwar “Hanoi Jane” in 1972 who had just won an Oscar for her performance in Klute.
The Talbots choose to follow heroes or heroic couples in each of their chosen liberation, “Second American Revolution” movements, but I like the way they connect the personal and political lives of their subjects during these periods, with a lot of emphasis on internationals, women and people of color who were vilified, ignored or degraded by the press, government and/or upper classes at the time.
How do the Talbots elucidate both the “Triumphs and Tragedies?” Even “name-dropping” people like Bella Abzug, James Baldwin, Shirley Chisholm, Bobby Seale and Harvey Milk in one paragraph, and many more throughout the book, gives a sense of the marvelous “cast of characters” and political / creative activity swirling around and interconnecting in the period arching the 60s and 70s. But the “tragedies” were certainly there as well. Judy Gumbo and Stew Albert visit her parents in Canada before they marry, but on their way home a flight attendant hands them a Toronto Globe with the headline “14,500 U. S. Soldiers Killed in Vietnam in 1968,” the year Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were assassinated and riots rocked the country; and both Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin died in late 1970 as a kind of parenthesis, to say nothing of thousands of Vietnamese, Cambodians, Czrchoslovaks, Latin Americans and others in resistance movements and invasions all over the world.
“The civil rights movement – which won its greatest victories in the first half of the 1960s – ignited the second American Revolution.” But like the Founding Fathers of the First Revolution, “the nation fell from the ideals of its hallowed founding documents,” caving in to the demands of traditional racism in “States rights” in the South and corrupt politicians in the north and west. Just as maintaining the African slaves was “The nation’s founding betrayal,” abandonment of the hopes of Native and women’s freedoms continued and followed as well.
The second chapter covers Bobby Seale “politically motivating the community” a s an Oakland, CA Black Panther primarily, but goes deep into Huey Newton and Eldridge Cleaver’s contrasting militaristic views.
The shadows of J. Edgar Hoover, FBI chief and “secret police commissar” whose “autocratic powers extended throughout ten presidencies” and his “clandestine counterintelligence program (COINTELPRO)” hover over all these persons and movements. “Field agents would be instructed to ‘thwart and disrupt’” parties, individuals and movements, “creating ‘factionalism’ and ‘suspicion’ within…ranks and fomenting ‘opposition’ from the (Black or other) community at large.” Indeed, Gumbo pulls clips from her own FBI files to locate times, places and people throughout Yippie Girl, they are so offensive and diligent in their scrutiny and pursuit of her and Albert's personal and political lives.
“Sisterhood is Blooming” was a revelation to me (then in Milwaukee and Madison, WI) of the Chicago paramedic abortion services of the “Jane” collective, their dedication to “the rights of a woman to her own body, and also her ability to be economically self-sufficient” through abortion and birth control. Heather Booth learned “moral core” and “There are sometimes unjust laws, and you need to stand up to the unjust laws and unjust authorities” in work protecting voters in Mississippi in Freedom Summer 1964, carrying courage back home through the arrest of “The Abortion 7,” being freed on bail and then release after Roe v. Wade federally guaranteed rights to abortion in the first trimester under “right to privacy” in January of 1973.
Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, Fred Ross and other United Farm Worker and labor organizers are the subject of “The Martyr Complex,” outlining the grape and lettuce boycotts and Chavez’s fasts leading to his death of a heart attack in 1993. Huerta has continued “fighting the good fight,” “demonstrating for livable wage increases for home care workers” as recently as 2019, at the age of 89.
Craig Rodwell, originator of gay and lesbian bookstores Oscar Wilde and Christopher Street, moved to New York City in 1958 from Chicago. He moved in gay circles and had a long term love affair with Harvey Milk. After depression, a suicide attempt and inspirations of Freedom Summer and Antiwar protests, he began to organize with Philadelphia and other cities' activists to break out of their “deviant” status, wanting to be “out,” legally and openly, in bars controlled by gays rather than the Mafia. The Stonewall Raid June 28, 1969 did not go well for the New York City Vice Squad, however, and the Pride Parade to Central Park’s Sheep Meadow he helped organize the next year fulfilled his lifetime dream of liberation.
“We All Shine On,” the 1968 to 2020 chapter on John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s activism combined with their lives as artists, musicians and lovers is the best short portrait of both I’ve ever read. Peace, love and rock and roll; constantly harassed by the FBI, racists, misogynists, psychic and drug-leeches and Beatles-lovers, they persist. With deep stories of their contacts, inspirations and use of their money, celebrity, the media and amazing talent for good in the world, the Talbot’s depiction is stellar. John especially, had “wit, candor and self-deprecating humor about issues that bitterly divided the American people,” and Yoko, an “endless optimist,” balanced Lennon with an urge “to do our best to keep the world floating and not sinking.”
“The Great Escape” chronicles the American Indian Movement, Wounded Knee in 1890 and 1973, Dennis Banks, Russell Means and Madonna Thunder Hawk in their 72-day standoff with Nixon’s, the governor’s and tribal GOONS military barrage. Their triumphs and tragedies inspired not only Native peoples worldwide, but those “living to fight another day” who went to Standing Rock in 2016 with their words and example.
A revolution is a rebellion that replaces a system with a “sudden and momentous change” to another system in cyclical motion (American Heritage Dictionary, Fifth Edition (2016). This is not a political rebellion against government persons and policies only, although the repressive, military-industrial imperialism of the Nixon and Reagan eras and assassinations of progressive change leaders certainly brought that on. The Talbots expand the political context to “the sweeping social and cultural transformation” that would, I would say, inexorably “keep the unfinished work of US democracy alive” to this day.
Written as a well-researched third-person narrative of “this volcanic period,” with many interviews and quotes from subjects, their writings and their friends, families and compatriots of the period, it won a well-deserved Best General Non-Fiction (2021) Award at the Northern California Book Reviewers ceremony September 11th of 2022.
David and Margaret Talbot’s By the Light of Burning Dreams gives us portraits of fourteen or more specific heroes and the movements and crisis points focusing on “climactic events or turning points in the lives” “from this second American Revolution” where their Triumphs and Tragedies occurred. There’s a tremendous amount of overlap in scenes, events and characters among Yippie Girl, The Activist's Media Handbook and Burning Dreams, but each is chronological “non-fiction” from different perspectives, voices and styles.
Gumbo’s “tall, blond, native Californian” “serious revolutionary” friend Anne Weills, for example, shows up as the “paramour” of post-Chicago 7 “flawed leader” and 2917 Ashby Avenue “Red Family” (Gumbo never used that term) resident Tom Hayden in the first chapter, “The Purity of Protest and the Complexity of Politics.” “Radical insurgents who broke into political office in the 1970s” is his category, and the Talbots call his relationship and political partnership with Jane Fonda “one of the most effective political unions in the history of the American Left.” This reflects their interests in cultural changes that brought her to him as antiwar “Hanoi Jane” in 1972 who had just won an Oscar for her performance in Klute.
The Talbots choose to follow heroes or heroic couples in each of their chosen liberation, “Second American Revolution” movements, but I like the way they connect the personal and political lives of their subjects during these periods, with a lot of emphasis on internationals, women and people of color who were vilified, ignored or degraded by the press, government and/or upper classes at the time.
How do the Talbots elucidate both the “Triumphs and Tragedies?” Even “name-dropping” people like Bella Abzug, James Baldwin, Shirley Chisholm, Bobby Seale and Harvey Milk in one paragraph, and many more throughout the book, gives a sense of the marvelous “cast of characters” and political / creative activity swirling around and interconnecting in the period arching the 60s and 70s. But the “tragedies” were certainly there as well. Judy Gumbo and Stew Albert visit her parents in Canada before they marry, but on their way home a flight attendant hands them a Toronto Globe with the headline “14,500 U. S. Soldiers Killed in Vietnam in 1968,” the year Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were assassinated and riots rocked the country; and both Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin died in late 1970 as a kind of parenthesis, to say nothing of thousands of Vietnamese, Cambodians, Czrchoslovaks, Latin Americans and others in resistance movements and invasions all over the world.
“The civil rights movement – which won its greatest victories in the first half of the 1960s – ignited the second American Revolution.” But like the Founding Fathers of the First Revolution, “the nation fell from the ideals of its hallowed founding documents,” caving in to the demands of traditional racism in “States rights” in the South and corrupt politicians in the north and west. Just as maintaining the African slaves was “The nation’s founding betrayal,” abandonment of the hopes of Native and women’s freedoms continued and followed as well.
The second chapter covers Bobby Seale “politically motivating the community” a s an Oakland, CA Black Panther primarily, but goes deep into Huey Newton and Eldridge Cleaver’s contrasting militaristic views.
The shadows of J. Edgar Hoover, FBI chief and “secret police commissar” whose “autocratic powers extended throughout ten presidencies” and his “clandestine counterintelligence program (COINTELPRO)” hover over all these persons and movements. “Field agents would be instructed to ‘thwart and disrupt’” parties, individuals and movements, “creating ‘factionalism’ and ‘suspicion’ within…ranks and fomenting ‘opposition’ from the (Black or other) community at large.” Indeed, Gumbo pulls clips from her own FBI files to locate times, places and people throughout Yippie Girl, they are so offensive and diligent in their scrutiny and pursuit of her and Albert's personal and political lives.
“Sisterhood is Blooming” was a revelation to me (then in Milwaukee and Madison, WI) of the Chicago paramedic abortion services of the “Jane” collective, their dedication to “the rights of a woman to her own body, and also her ability to be economically self-sufficient” through abortion and birth control. Heather Booth learned “moral core” and “There are sometimes unjust laws, and you need to stand up to the unjust laws and unjust authorities” in work protecting voters in Mississippi in Freedom Summer 1964, carrying courage back home through the arrest of “The Abortion 7,” being freed on bail and then release after Roe v. Wade federally guaranteed rights to abortion in the first trimester under “right to privacy” in January of 1973.
Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, Fred Ross and other United Farm Worker and labor organizers are the subject of “The Martyr Complex,” outlining the grape and lettuce boycotts and Chavez’s fasts leading to his death of a heart attack in 1993. Huerta has continued “fighting the good fight,” “demonstrating for livable wage increases for home care workers” as recently as 2019, at the age of 89.
Craig Rodwell, originator of gay and lesbian bookstores Oscar Wilde and Christopher Street, moved to New York City in 1958 from Chicago. He moved in gay circles and had a long term love affair with Harvey Milk. After depression, a suicide attempt and inspirations of Freedom Summer and Antiwar protests, he began to organize with Philadelphia and other cities' activists to break out of their “deviant” status, wanting to be “out,” legally and openly, in bars controlled by gays rather than the Mafia. The Stonewall Raid June 28, 1969 did not go well for the New York City Vice Squad, however, and the Pride Parade to Central Park’s Sheep Meadow he helped organize the next year fulfilled his lifetime dream of liberation.
“We All Shine On,” the 1968 to 2020 chapter on John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s activism combined with their lives as artists, musicians and lovers is the best short portrait of both I’ve ever read. Peace, love and rock and roll; constantly harassed by the FBI, racists, misogynists, psychic and drug-leeches and Beatles-lovers, they persist. With deep stories of their contacts, inspirations and use of their money, celebrity, the media and amazing talent for good in the world, the Talbot’s depiction is stellar. John especially, had “wit, candor and self-deprecating humor about issues that bitterly divided the American people,” and Yoko, an “endless optimist,” balanced Lennon with an urge “to do our best to keep the world floating and not sinking.”
“The Great Escape” chronicles the American Indian Movement, Wounded Knee in 1890 and 1973, Dennis Banks, Russell Means and Madonna Thunder Hawk in their 72-day standoff with Nixon’s, the governor’s and tribal GOONS military barrage. Their triumphs and tragedies inspired not only Native peoples worldwide, but those “living to fight another day” who went to Standing Rock in 2016 with their words and example.
A revolution is a rebellion that replaces a system with a “sudden and momentous change” to another system in cyclical motion (American Heritage Dictionary, Fifth Edition (2016). This is not a political rebellion against government persons and policies only, although the repressive, military-industrial imperialism of the Nixon and Reagan eras and assassinations of progressive change leaders certainly brought that on. The Talbots expand the political context to “the sweeping social and cultural transformation” that would, I would say, inexorably “keep the unfinished work of US democracy alive” to this day.
Written as a well-researched third-person narrative of “this volcanic period,” with many interviews and quotes from subjects, their writings and their friends, families and compatriots of the period, it won a well-deserved Best General Non-Fiction (2021) Award at the Northern California Book Reviewers ceremony September 11th of 2022.
July 29, 2021
A Compelling Trip Back to the Tumultuous 1960s and 1970s
Please visit I. David’s blog at https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...
By the Light of Burning Dreams: The Triumphs and Tragedies of the Second American Revolution, by brother and sister David and Margaret Talbot, tells the stories of some of the most radical leaders of the 1960s and 1970s. The Talbots vividly bring these these activists back to life, both as a refresher for those of us who were there at the time, and for members of younger generations, who might not be familiar with their exploits.
The Talbots make the argument that the radical leaders of the 1960s and 1970s sought to complete the dream of the first Revolutionary War by working to extend, the full protection of the Constitution to all Americans. In support of their argument they focus on Bobby Seale of the Black Panthers, Heather Booth of the Jane Collective, peace activists Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda, United Farm Worker leaders, Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta, Craig Rodwell of the Gay Pride movement, celebrity peace activists, John Lennon and Yoko Ono and American Indian Movement leaders, Dennis Banks, Madonna Thunder Hawk and Russell Means.
During the period when these people were most active it was impossible not to feel strongly about them. They all had many followers and admirers. But they were also reviled by many others. Most were considered by the administration (mostly the Nixon administration) to be very dangerous and, as such, were hounded by the FBI.
The Talbots do not generally take a position on their subjects. They simply present them as real people, with real people flaws, who had the courage to risk their own safety and freedom to seek what they thought was right.
With all of the unrest in America today it is a good time to look back on the lives of these combative reformists to remember what drove them, how they responded and what impact they had on our society. By the Light of Burning Dreams is a moving and evocative trip back to the 1960s and 1970s and reminds us that, no matter how tumultuous our current times seem, we actually have survived even more tumultuous times.
I liked this book very much. It illuminated the real personalities of highly controversial figures from a highly controversial time. It took on a subject that, at one point, would have been highly charged, and presented it in a non-judgmental way so that all readers can appreciate the radical events of the 1960s and 1970s as a historical era that may provide some insight to the conflicts of our current times. I give it 5 stars and recommend it for everyone.
December 3, 2023
The Talbot siblings are not traditional historians but rather journalists with ties to Hollywood. It’s no wonder the Long 1960s would intrigue them enough to write about it. Many of the stories told in By the Light of Burning Dreams have been turned into Hollywood films in subsequent years. Regardless of not being historians, the Talbots have put together a compelling collection of stories that they claim was the Second American Revolution. I admit that I scoffed a bit at that sub title at first, but the Talbots are convincing.
I didn’t read this book in order. I started with the chapter that piqued my interest most. My major was Spanish and Latin American Culture so I immediately skipped to the Martyr Complex chapter because I’m familiar with Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers. I was delighted that I was enlightened further by Talbots. One thing that I was unaware of, or at least didn’t piece together before reading this chapter was that Chavez modeled collective bargaining by contacting Civil Rights Movement leaders for their assistance. I knew he was a non-violent protester but I didn’t realize how much Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr. had influenced his protesting style. The hunger strikes got the attention of Robert Kennedy and validated his efforts. Not only did the UFW go on to change the way workers were treated but also made food production safer for consumption. Once his health deteriorated, Huerta continued making progress for the movement.
The next chapter that piqued my interest was Revolution Has Come, Time to Pick up the Gun. I admit that I didn’t know much about the Black Panthers other than what I had seen in movies. Forrest Gump and BlacKkKlansman come to mind. My understanding of the movement was that it was violent and largely ineffective. What I learned was that the movement was started by Bobby Seal and Huey Newton. Both leaders had different views of what the organization would be which eventually led to a fallout. Seale was looking for long lasting peaceful changes while Newton favored a violent and quick resolution. Ultimately the organization fed a lot of hungry people and inspired many to fight racism. The movement dissolved once Seale left as Newton wasn’t a sustainable leader. I learned quite a bit and my view of the movement has changed.
Another chapter that caught my attention was Liberation Day. Regrettably I am woefully ignorant of the Gay Rights Movement. I know I should have seen movies like Milk or Stonewall but I haven’t. I loved that Craig Rodwell chose education in the form of opening up a bookstore based around gay authors and subject matter as a way to inform and protest. Naturally the bookstore became a safe space for gay folks to meet up and organize to further the movement. The story shifts to the Stonewall Inn where many gay folks stayed and were harrassed. Riots broke out and Rodwell was compelled to eradicate any negative public opinion of homosexuality. Eventually he organized the first gay pride event that has empowered the LGBTQ for decades.
Lastly I’ll write about the chapter called Sisterhood is Blooming. In light of the recent repeal of Roe v Wade, I figured I might do well to revisit the movement that led to legal abortions. I had never heard of the Jane Collective. I was fascinated to know that they weren’t solely focused on reproductive rights but also on relationships with men as it relates to equality, harassment, and violence. This young group of women took big risks and made huge strides for Women’s and Black Rights from the onset of the movement in 1964 during the Freedom Summer campaign.
I didn’t read this book in order. I started with the chapter that piqued my interest most. My major was Spanish and Latin American Culture so I immediately skipped to the Martyr Complex chapter because I’m familiar with Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers. I was delighted that I was enlightened further by Talbots. One thing that I was unaware of, or at least didn’t piece together before reading this chapter was that Chavez modeled collective bargaining by contacting Civil Rights Movement leaders for their assistance. I knew he was a non-violent protester but I didn’t realize how much Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr. had influenced his protesting style. The hunger strikes got the attention of Robert Kennedy and validated his efforts. Not only did the UFW go on to change the way workers were treated but also made food production safer for consumption. Once his health deteriorated, Huerta continued making progress for the movement.
The next chapter that piqued my interest was Revolution Has Come, Time to Pick up the Gun. I admit that I didn’t know much about the Black Panthers other than what I had seen in movies. Forrest Gump and BlacKkKlansman come to mind. My understanding of the movement was that it was violent and largely ineffective. What I learned was that the movement was started by Bobby Seal and Huey Newton. Both leaders had different views of what the organization would be which eventually led to a fallout. Seale was looking for long lasting peaceful changes while Newton favored a violent and quick resolution. Ultimately the organization fed a lot of hungry people and inspired many to fight racism. The movement dissolved once Seale left as Newton wasn’t a sustainable leader. I learned quite a bit and my view of the movement has changed.
Another chapter that caught my attention was Liberation Day. Regrettably I am woefully ignorant of the Gay Rights Movement. I know I should have seen movies like Milk or Stonewall but I haven’t. I loved that Craig Rodwell chose education in the form of opening up a bookstore based around gay authors and subject matter as a way to inform and protest. Naturally the bookstore became a safe space for gay folks to meet up and organize to further the movement. The story shifts to the Stonewall Inn where many gay folks stayed and were harrassed. Riots broke out and Rodwell was compelled to eradicate any negative public opinion of homosexuality. Eventually he organized the first gay pride event that has empowered the LGBTQ for decades.
Lastly I’ll write about the chapter called Sisterhood is Blooming. In light of the recent repeal of Roe v Wade, I figured I might do well to revisit the movement that led to legal abortions. I had never heard of the Jane Collective. I was fascinated to know that they weren’t solely focused on reproductive rights but also on relationships with men as it relates to equality, harassment, and violence. This young group of women took big risks and made huge strides for Women’s and Black Rights from the onset of the movement in 1964 during the Freedom Summer campaign.
August 28, 2021
(3.5 stars) (Audiobook) This work looks at the period between the late 1960s/early 1970s and the efforts of some of the top "revolutionaries" that fought to change the established order, looking to either bring about the end of an unpopular war, increase the rights of the oppressed or improve working conditions. From the anti-Vietnam protests, to the Black Panthers, to the American Farm Workers to the American Indian Movement, this book focuses on the lives and actions of those key leaders that drove what the authors view as the Second American Revolution, where attitudes and laws changed to accept the desires of these individuals. The men and women in these movements are not perfect and they made many mistakes. Yet, their impact, even if it seemed superseded by the rise of the opposition into government, can't be dismissed.
This book would be seen more positively in the current liberal side of the US political spectrum, whereas the modern right might see this as a hagiography glorifying criminals and terrorists. Still, the biases notwithstanding, I did come to learn a lot more about these movements. It is hard to read and study such actions in a purely neutral setting, but there is a lot to learn. Have to start somewhere.
This book would be seen more positively in the current liberal side of the US political spectrum, whereas the modern right might see this as a hagiography glorifying criminals and terrorists. Still, the biases notwithstanding, I did come to learn a lot more about these movements. It is hard to read and study such actions in a purely neutral setting, but there is a lot to learn. Have to start somewhere.
September 24, 2021
Considering the current environment of me -too , BLM , Social justice warriors, This should be essential reading for high school students to understand how far the country has come and how hard the fight was for some of the equality and justice we have today. It was not that long ago that women, minorities , migrants , had very little power over major life decisions. It is really enlightening to see how the anti war movement tied into many of those freedom and equality issues as well.
Some of the featured leaders the book highlights are Tom Hayden, Jane Fonda, Bobby Seale, Huey Newton, Heather Booth, Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, Craig Rodwell, John Lennon, They stood up for the rights of marginalized groups, clashed with the government and were infiltrated by the FBI.
The details and anecdotes in the book bring the humaness and faults of these leaders into focus. Tom Hayden particularly, had to reinvent himself and, with the help of Jane Fonda , made a difference in the politics of the era for years. The Black Panther history has a direct comparison to BLM today, and shows how long their struggle has endured.
I was inspired by how dedicated these leaders were to social justice causes. I hope we are still producing young people with his kind of passion today.
Some of the featured leaders the book highlights are Tom Hayden, Jane Fonda, Bobby Seale, Huey Newton, Heather Booth, Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, Craig Rodwell, John Lennon, They stood up for the rights of marginalized groups, clashed with the government and were infiltrated by the FBI.
The details and anecdotes in the book bring the humaness and faults of these leaders into focus. Tom Hayden particularly, had to reinvent himself and, with the help of Jane Fonda , made a difference in the politics of the era for years. The Black Panther history has a direct comparison to BLM today, and shows how long their struggle has endured.
I was inspired by how dedicated these leaders were to social justice causes. I hope we are still producing young people with his kind of passion today.
May 23, 2021
I won an Uncorrected Proof of By the Light of Burning Dreams: The Triumphs and Tragedies of the Second American Revolution by David Talbot and Margaret Talbot from Goodreads.
By the Light of Burning Dreams: The Triumphs and Tragedies of the Second American Revolution by David Talbot and Margaret Talbot is an excellent, informative book concerning an important part of our national history that is rarely taught in schools. Broken down into seven chapters that each cover a distinct movement, the authors guide readers to understand the initiation of each movement and the on-going struggles. The topics covered are the anti-war movement of the Vietnam War and the movements for equal rights by Blacks, Women, Laborers, the LGBQT community, and Native Americans. The re is also a chapter dedicated to Human Rights. The authors' writing style makes this book accessible for everyone, including school-aged readers, and this superb resource should be offered in classrooms and libraries throughout the country.
By the Light of Burning Dreams: The Triumphs and Tragedies of the Second American Revolution by David Talbot and Margaret Talbot is an excellent, informative book concerning an important part of our national history that is rarely taught in schools. Broken down into seven chapters that each cover a distinct movement, the authors guide readers to understand the initiation of each movement and the on-going struggles. The topics covered are the anti-war movement of the Vietnam War and the movements for equal rights by Blacks, Women, Laborers, the LGBQT community, and Native Americans. The re is also a chapter dedicated to Human Rights. The authors' writing style makes this book accessible for everyone, including school-aged readers, and this superb resource should be offered in classrooms and libraries throughout the country.
June 4, 2021
Great book for those wanting an overview of man of the movements surrounding the 60's and 70's. Most of us know Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X, John Lennon, Harvey Milk and Jane Fonda, but do you know who the Jane's were? Cesar Chaves? Dennis Banks? Booby Seale or Craig Rodwell? If you know the name, do you know what they stood for? Why are they important? This book takes a look at some of the lesser known as well as the more famous and what they did to carry on the light of the civil rights movement. You will learn many things that the news won't tell you now and wouldn't tell you then.
This book certainly does not go in depth into any of the various movements since it is only 331 pages, but in seven chapters it peaks your interest and leaves you wanting to know more about each of those movements. You think the Civil Rights movement was for only the rights of African Americans? Think again. This book will open your eyes to things that have been left out of history.
This book certainly does not go in depth into any of the various movements since it is only 331 pages, but in seven chapters it peaks your interest and leaves you wanting to know more about each of those movements. You think the Civil Rights movement was for only the rights of African Americans? Think again. This book will open your eyes to things that have been left out of history.
August 26, 2021
I so do appreciate this succinct summary of 1970s societal shifts. Each chapter is powerful and historically educational. Tom Hayden, “brilliant New Left strategist.” His association and later marriage with actress Jane Fonda was “one of the most effective political unions in the history of the American left” [p52]. Black Panthers, Bobby Seale, Hewey Newton and their attempts to raise community consciousness and “inspire Black Americans to take political action, not to incite a bloodbath” [p77]. Heather Booth and the Women of Jane that provided stress-free abortions and where “the air crackled with wild ideas” [p134]. Cesar Chavez, whose food fast was a “brilliant act of theater” [p171]. The “Yippies,” who “interjected some much-needed madcap humor into the heavily-browed New Left” [p238]. And the daring escape of Navajo Lenny Foster and co-founder of the American Indian Movement Dennis Banks through the fortified encirclement at the second siege of Wounded Knee. I loved it all!
October 11, 2021
I won a copy of this book through Goodreads Giveaways and am voluntarily leaving a review.
This is a thorough and well-written overview of protest movements of the 60s and 70s, and I highly recommend it. It’s entertaining and informative, and I think now more than ever those of us committed to social justice need reminders that this work has been ongoing, has faced successes and setbacks, and that’s a cause for hope rather than despair. There’s real inspiration here, even though some might say “if we’ve been at this so long and we’re still doing it, what’s the point?” The point is that we’re farther along now than we were then, and we’ll get farther still and farther still until we get the world we want. Folks profiles in this book knew that, and did the work, and this helps impress on the reader why they did and why we should too.
This is a thorough and well-written overview of protest movements of the 60s and 70s, and I highly recommend it. It’s entertaining and informative, and I think now more than ever those of us committed to social justice need reminders that this work has been ongoing, has faced successes and setbacks, and that’s a cause for hope rather than despair. There’s real inspiration here, even though some might say “if we’ve been at this so long and we’re still doing it, what’s the point?” The point is that we’re farther along now than we were then, and we’ll get farther still and farther still until we get the world we want. Folks profiles in this book knew that, and did the work, and this helps impress on the reader why they did and why we should too.
April 27, 2021
Worth reading for the chapters on the Black Panthers, the origins of the Pride march, César Chávez and the NFWA, and the American Indian Movement. The book's greatest strength is in openly discussing how personality quirks and human foibles affect and inform political work, and, even more importantly, how the very systems we are trying to deconstruct are inevitably also part of the fabric of our being, so that we cannot require or assume ethical or political perfection from those pushing for change in order to move forward. A humbling reminder, in my opinion, for the left to resist cancel culture and remember to band together across differences to combat oppression.
January 4, 2022
The Talbots run briefly through a sampling of radical politics from the 1960s (including the Black Panthers, abortion activists the Jane Collective, Gay Pride, and the American Indian Movement, among others), briefly capturing the high points of their successes and failures, as well as their intersections. Saddening and inspiring in turn and highly reaadable, a good capsule summary for those interested in the era.
March 28, 2023
A fascinating look at the some of the liberation movements of the 60s and 70s, including women's, farmworkers, Black Panthers, gay rights, and a Native rebellion at Wounded Knee. I was coming of age then and was swept up in the times. But the book provided many more details and people than I'd known back then.
One benefit from the book -- it portrayed famous activists realistically, with faults included.
Recommended to anyone interested in those times.
One benefit from the book -- it portrayed famous activists realistically, with faults included.
Recommended to anyone interested in those times.
December 17, 2025
An inspiring history of the revolutionary movements that makes an interesting point; that they were all of one piece, sort of like the first 10 amendments are The Bill of Rights. It's well written, up until the last chapter where it starts off with the assumption that you've just read a history of Wounded Knee and they can make comments without bothering with the groundwork. It ends well though, and it's good to have this under your belt.
May 5, 2021
It’s hard to believe sometimes how much really was going on during the ‘60s and ‘70s. I’ve wanted to believe we’d come a long way since then, but in many ways, it seems we haven’t. Some of the information I already knew, but much I didn’t. Educational, and certainly eye opening, I recommend By the Light of Burning Dreams.
I received a copy of this book for free through Goodreads giveaways.
I received a copy of this book for free through Goodreads giveaways.
June 30, 2021
This is an important book. I couldn't put it down once I started reading it. While I missed seeing any mention of such leaders as Angela Davis and Gloria Steinem, the portraits of movement leaders, some well-known and others more obscure, were truly complex and fascinating. I came away feeling that we need to keep fighting for human rights, no matter what.
September 11, 2021
Great overview of the trials and tribulations of the ongoing civil rights movements that had a huge surge in the 60s and 70s. Well written and enough depth in brevity to entice me to learn more and more... and to continue to be angry for our nation. Worth the read... and the reread... and the sharing with others.
June 12, 2022
Terrific book detailing the leaders in aspects of the "revolution" in the 60's and 70's in the United States. This his is any era. Anti-War, Pro-choice, Black power, United Farm Workers, Gay power, Native American battles , and the influence of Lennon and Ono are chronicled.
May 7, 2021
I won this in a Goodreads giveaway.
Very interesting recent history. Sadly we are still fighting these battles.
Very interesting recent history. Sadly we are still fighting these battles.
August 11, 2021
Engaging episodic take on 1970s history, through deep dives into lesser-known stories.
September 9, 2021
My husband loved this book and is rereading it again.
September 27, 2021
Engrossing history of revolutionary movements of the 60’s and 70’s, very well written, 4.7
June 26, 2022
This was hard to read because of all of the historical facts that are jam packed into every page. However I learned a lot about of the the movements that came from the Civil Rights era. I was surprised the most about what I didn’t now about John Lennon and Yoko Ono.
December 18, 2022
My takeaway quote (Lafayette): "I never would have drawn my sword in the cause of America if I could have conceived thereby that I was founding a land of slavery."
July 25, 2023
Fantastic read! I learned a lot about some personal heroes. I then watched The Trial of the Chicago 7 and saw a number of them in the film (portrayed by actors lol)
July 11, 2025
This is a very good book. A good survey on 60s social and political movements. I just wished there was more on the FBI and how they all fell apart.
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