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aDrawing on comprehensive interviews and archival research,
Andrew E. Hunt has written a highly informative account of one of
the twentieth centuryas leading figures of American
radicalism.a
&$151;"The Journal of American History"
"The story of David Dellinger's half century of leadership in
the struggle for peace and social justice in the United States
challenges the conventional narrative of recent American political
history. Instead of the familiar history-by-decade, in which the
radical thirties are followed by the conservative forties and
fifties, to be succeeded again by the radical sixties, and so on,
Hunt's biography of Dellinger provides readers with a sense of
important and underlying continuities in the history of American
radicalism."
--Maurice Isserman, author of "If I Had a Hammer: The Death of the
Old Left and the Birth of the New Left"
"Meticulously researched and gracefully written, Andrew Hunt's
splendid biography of David Dellinger follows the courageous
revolutionary through six decades of activism while contributing
new insights into the colorful history and interactions of
pacifist, antiwar, and progressive organizations that shook the
American establishment."
--Melvin Small, Wayne State University
"In this valuable biography, Hunt offers an outstanding
description of Dellinger's political thought and activities over a
sixty year period. Particularly interesting, because so little has
been written about the subject, is the detailed discussion of
Dellinger's antiwar activities during WWII. At the same time, Hunt
is careful to portray a comprehensive view of Dellinger's career
and placeshim in relation to the work of others in the American
left."
--David J. Langum, author of "William M. Kunstler: The Most Hated
Lawyer in America"
The year was 1969. In a Chicago courthouse, David Dellinger, one
of the Chicago Eight, stood trial for conspiring to disrupt the
National Democratic Convention. Dellinger, a long-time but
relatively unknown activist, was suddenly, at fifty-three,
catapulted into the limelight for his part in this intense
courtroom drama.
From obscurity to leader of the antiwar movement, David
Dellinger is the first full biography of a man who bridged the gap
between the Old Left and the New Left. Born in 1915 in the upscale
Boston suburb of Wakefield to privilege, Dellinger attended Yale
during the Depression, where he became an ardent pacifist and
antiwar activist. Rejecting his parentsa affluent lifestyle, he
endured lengthy prison sentences as a conscientious objector to
World War II and created a commune in northern New Jersey in the
1940s, a prototype for those to follow twenty years later.
His instrumental role in the creation of "Liberation" magazine
in 1956 launched him onto the national stage. Writing regular
essays for the influential radical monthly on the arms race and the
Civil Rights movement, he earned an audience among the New Left
radicals. As anti-Vietnam sentiment grew, he became, in Abbie
Hoffmanas words, the father of the antiwar movement and the
architect of the 1968 demonstrations in Chicago. He remained active
in anti-war causes until his death on May 25, 2004 at age 88.
Vilified by critics and glorified by supporters, Dellinger was a
man of contradictions: a rigid Ghandian who nonetheless supported
violent revolutionarymovements; a radical thinker and gifted writer
forced to work as a baker to feed his large family; and a
charismatic leader who taught his followers to distrust all
leaders. Along the way, he encountered Eleanor Roosevelt, Ho Chi
Minh, Martin Luther King, Jr., the Black Panthers and all the other
major figures of the American Left.
The remarkable story of a stubborn visionary torn between
revolution and compromise, David Dellinger reveals the perils of
dissent in America through the struggles of one of our most
important dissenters.
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