Radical Son: A Generational Oddysey

Excellent Read great insight to the loony left. and some very interesting history

In this absorbing and candid autobiography, the author describes his journey from leftist radical to conservative pundit. More accurately, Horowitz is a classical liberal rather than a conservative and a very effective activist for truth and freedom of speech these days. The book also explores the history of  leftism in America  and provides interesting portraits of certain prominent intellectuals.Part I: Black Holes (1904 - 1939) deals with the history of his communist parents and his early childhood, whilst the next: Coming Of Age (1940 - 1956) tells of his teenage years, his studies and first marriage. Part 3: New Worlds (1957 - 1967) describes his time at Berkeley, his first writings for radical magazines of the time and his sojourn in London and Sweden.In Part 4: Revolutions (1968 - 1973), the family returns to Berkeley where the counterculture was in full swing. This is when Horowitz started working for the New Left magazine Ramparts and marked the beginning of his involvement with the Black Panthers. This was also when he met his long-time friend and collaborator  Peter Collier .His tragic involvement with the Panthers is detailed in Part 5 (1973 - 1974). This culminated in the murder of his friend Betty Van Patten, the tragedy that caused him to have second thoughts about his political convictions and associates on the  Left .The next chapter deals with the period 1975 to 1980 when he tried to discover the truth about the death of Van Patten. He ceased all political activity and slowly came to the realization that some people had an inherent  will to evil . Most of his leftist friends did not care about the murder and simply ignored it although they knew who was behind it. In this period he co-authored a commercially successful book on the  The Rockefellers  with Peter Collier.Part 7: Coming Home (1980 - 1992) chronicles the fruition of his second thoughts when he finally left the  Left . What is of particular interest here is his description of how the moonbat leaders of the gay community in San Francisco contributed to the death and suffering of the AIDS epidemic because of their denial that a promiscuous lifestyle contributed to the spread of the disease.It was in this period that his second collaboration with Collier, a book on the Kennedys, was published and became a huge success. Also, the seminal book on the radicalism of the 1960s,  Destructive Generation , was published. In 1991 he founded the Center For The Study of Popular Culture and the journal Heterodoxy.Radical Son is a most moving autobiography and an insightful examination of the leftist mindset of hate and  nihilism , as well as a gripping historical perspective on the intellectual currents of the 20th century. The book includes 18 black and white photographs. I also recommend  What's Left?  by Nick Cohen, a book by a gifted British writer who describes his own disillusionment with the Liberal Left.