Virginia Moffatt
Flying Close to the Sun tells how Cathy Wilkerson transformed herself from a nice middle class girl to a violent revolutionary. Describing how she became involved in left-wing politics as a student, the book charts her developing understanding of the political issues of the 1960s and ’70s and how she begins to see violence as a possible tool to respond to injustice.
Wilkerson is at her best when she describes the debates around the formation of the Weather Underground and the…
Gandhi and Beyond is divided into three parts: the first two chapters look at the work of Gandhi and Martin Luther King; the next three at how their ideas have been used by other activists such as Cesar Chavez and Dorothy Day; and the final two at issues of gender and principles for action. The author says in his introduction that he hopes it will add to academic knowledge about nonviolence, whilst also inspiring people to act. I think he is more successful in the former objective, than the…
