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Rads: The 1970 Bombing of the Army Math Research Center at the University of Wisconsin and Its Aftermath
An account of the 1970 bombing of the Army Math Research Center at the University of Wisconsin sheds light on the event while also chronicling the anti-war movement. 50,000 first printing. $60,000 ad/promo. Tour.
496 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 1992
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July 15, 2022
How did the 1960s end? Conventional perceptions point to the Manson Family murders and the stabbing of a concert-goer by a Hells Angel at the Altamont Speedway during a free Rolling Stones concert. The “end of the 60s” is actually more nuanced and complex than conventional perception will allow. For one thing, there were other events and disasters that contributed just as much to the darkening of that era’s optimistic mood. Take, for example, the bombing of the Army Math Research Center on the University of Wisconsin’s campus in Madison. Rads by Tom Bates gives a thorough and accessible account of what happened there in the summer of 1970, reminding us further that history is more complicated than the mainstream narratives, mostly fueled by the irresponsibility of the media and the entertainment industry.
The central, and most prominent figure in Rads is Karl Armstrong, a college dropout and hippy who joined the anti-war movement in 1968. He had come from a rough, working class background but did well enough in high school to make it to college. He wasn’t much of a student. With low grades and lack of enthusiasm, he dropped out before re-matriculating and dropping out two times subsequently. During his off-and-on college studies, he worked at a string of blue collar jobs and quit all of them, his own personal trend that continued up until the time of his arrest. Karl Armstrong actually loved the college life, or, at least, he loved everything about college but going to classes and doing homework. He made a lot of friends on campus and spent a lot of time hanging out there, even when he wasn’t enrolled. He also got involved in the drug scene and the political demonstrations put on by the New Left which was thriving in Wisconsin just as much as it was in San Francisco and New York City.
That is when things began to get dark. Karl Armstrong attended the Democratic National Convention in Chicago where the police began beating non-violent demonstrators with billy clubs and tear gassing them. In fact, two of them seized Karl and threw him in the river. After that, the peace movement began to turn violent. At first, Karl was dismissive of terrorist groups like the Weather Underground, but then after police brutality continued to be a problem at demonstrations held on the University of Wisconsin campus, Karl gave in and embraced terrorist tactics to end the war too.
Of other importance in this story is Karl’s younger brother Dwight who idolized him and followed him into one insane scheme after another. With assistance from various people, the two brothers set out on a bombing and arson campaign. Most of their attacks were miserable failures, but they did catch the public’s attention and Karl maintained clandestine relationships with two underground newspapers in Madison. They became known as the New Year’s Gang even though Karl preferred to be called by the gimmicky and pretentious title of Vanguard Of the Revolution. They became heroic figures in the activist community even though no one actually knew who they were.
While the police became more violent towards the demonstrators and the war in Vietnam seemed like it would never end, Karl and Dwight decided to do something more drastic. With the help of two other activists, they made a car bomb out of ammonium nitrate fertilizer and blew off the side of a building on campus, a building that housed the office of the Army Math Research Center which was a think tank that calculated probabilities to maximize America’s kill-count in Vietnam. A deeply moral question hangs over the entirety of this story: Is the bombing committed by the New Year’s Gang, a crime that mistakenly killed one innocent man, such a terrible crime in light of the hundreds of thousands of people killed by US troops in Vietnam whose only crime was being born citizens of that small Asian nation? Who are the real criminals here?
After that, the story follows the escape of the New Year’s Gang, their trials, and the effect the bombing had on the activist movement at the time.
One of the great things about this book is how well Karl Armstrong and his associates are brought to life. The author follows them around and describes them so they seem like people you can get to know. Karl was such a laid-back and peaceful person that he appeared to be incapable of ever blowing something up. In fact, he comes off as such a loser that it is hard to believe he ever pulled the bombing off. Being the loser that he was, he was also a friendly, kind-hearted young man that people felt comfortable to be with. The contrast between his persona and his crimes is starkly drawn and a little bit troubling. Just think of the calmest and nicest person you know and then picture them carrying out acts of terrorism.
Another thing that is great about this book is the way it is is written. It reads like a novel, especially in the way it describes the settings and the characters, and also in the way it switches between depictions of Karl, his family, the political scene, the university administrators, and law enforcement. It is one of those book where you feel like you are there watching things as they happen. In that regard, Rads is also an excellent depiction of a particular time and place. Bates does a great job of capturing the feel of the Midwest city of Madison and the feeling of its college town life with the bars, the frat houses, the student ghettos, the hangouts, and the drug scene. So much has been said about the hippies and the anti-war movement in the more populated urban areas of the country that a lot of people don’t realize it was happening all over, even in the flyover states.
Rads by Tom Bates is a great book in the way it depicts its time and place. It gives a lesser-known angle on the era of the late 1960s, further helping the reader to understand what happened then and why. It also makes you wonder if the 1960s really did end. More likely, they transformed as the radicals of the time entered the work force and brought new values to the American public. Psychedelic music turned into progressive rock, anarchist politics were turned upside down and embraced with anger in the Punk movement, and young people continued to do drugs. But after the bombing at the University of Wisconsin, political demonstrations returned to non-violence and activists became more confrontational as educators, lawyers, journalists, and in all kinds of other ways too. Rads will not only enhance your understanding of the 1960s, it will also enhance your understanding of the vast and complicated fabric of American society.
The central, and most prominent figure in Rads is Karl Armstrong, a college dropout and hippy who joined the anti-war movement in 1968. He had come from a rough, working class background but did well enough in high school to make it to college. He wasn’t much of a student. With low grades and lack of enthusiasm, he dropped out before re-matriculating and dropping out two times subsequently. During his off-and-on college studies, he worked at a string of blue collar jobs and quit all of them, his own personal trend that continued up until the time of his arrest. Karl Armstrong actually loved the college life, or, at least, he loved everything about college but going to classes and doing homework. He made a lot of friends on campus and spent a lot of time hanging out there, even when he wasn’t enrolled. He also got involved in the drug scene and the political demonstrations put on by the New Left which was thriving in Wisconsin just as much as it was in San Francisco and New York City.
That is when things began to get dark. Karl Armstrong attended the Democratic National Convention in Chicago where the police began beating non-violent demonstrators with billy clubs and tear gassing them. In fact, two of them seized Karl and threw him in the river. After that, the peace movement began to turn violent. At first, Karl was dismissive of terrorist groups like the Weather Underground, but then after police brutality continued to be a problem at demonstrations held on the University of Wisconsin campus, Karl gave in and embraced terrorist tactics to end the war too.
Of other importance in this story is Karl’s younger brother Dwight who idolized him and followed him into one insane scheme after another. With assistance from various people, the two brothers set out on a bombing and arson campaign. Most of their attacks were miserable failures, but they did catch the public’s attention and Karl maintained clandestine relationships with two underground newspapers in Madison. They became known as the New Year’s Gang even though Karl preferred to be called by the gimmicky and pretentious title of Vanguard Of the Revolution. They became heroic figures in the activist community even though no one actually knew who they were.
While the police became more violent towards the demonstrators and the war in Vietnam seemed like it would never end, Karl and Dwight decided to do something more drastic. With the help of two other activists, they made a car bomb out of ammonium nitrate fertilizer and blew off the side of a building on campus, a building that housed the office of the Army Math Research Center which was a think tank that calculated probabilities to maximize America’s kill-count in Vietnam. A deeply moral question hangs over the entirety of this story: Is the bombing committed by the New Year’s Gang, a crime that mistakenly killed one innocent man, such a terrible crime in light of the hundreds of thousands of people killed by US troops in Vietnam whose only crime was being born citizens of that small Asian nation? Who are the real criminals here?
After that, the story follows the escape of the New Year’s Gang, their trials, and the effect the bombing had on the activist movement at the time.
One of the great things about this book is how well Karl Armstrong and his associates are brought to life. The author follows them around and describes them so they seem like people you can get to know. Karl was such a laid-back and peaceful person that he appeared to be incapable of ever blowing something up. In fact, he comes off as such a loser that it is hard to believe he ever pulled the bombing off. Being the loser that he was, he was also a friendly, kind-hearted young man that people felt comfortable to be with. The contrast between his persona and his crimes is starkly drawn and a little bit troubling. Just think of the calmest and nicest person you know and then picture them carrying out acts of terrorism.
Another thing that is great about this book is the way it is is written. It reads like a novel, especially in the way it describes the settings and the characters, and also in the way it switches between depictions of Karl, his family, the political scene, the university administrators, and law enforcement. It is one of those book where you feel like you are there watching things as they happen. In that regard, Rads is also an excellent depiction of a particular time and place. Bates does a great job of capturing the feel of the Midwest city of Madison and the feeling of its college town life with the bars, the frat houses, the student ghettos, the hangouts, and the drug scene. So much has been said about the hippies and the anti-war movement in the more populated urban areas of the country that a lot of people don’t realize it was happening all over, even in the flyover states.
Rads by Tom Bates is a great book in the way it depicts its time and place. It gives a lesser-known angle on the era of the late 1960s, further helping the reader to understand what happened then and why. It also makes you wonder if the 1960s really did end. More likely, they transformed as the radicals of the time entered the work force and brought new values to the American public. Psychedelic music turned into progressive rock, anarchist politics were turned upside down and embraced with anger in the Punk movement, and young people continued to do drugs. But after the bombing at the University of Wisconsin, political demonstrations returned to non-violence and activists became more confrontational as educators, lawyers, journalists, and in all kinds of other ways too. Rads will not only enhance your understanding of the 1960s, it will also enhance your understanding of the vast and complicated fabric of American society.
June 28, 2021
Violence does not work to achieve positive social change.
Nowhere is that more clear than in the realm of domestic terror and sabotage. Timothy Mcveigh failed to start a war against the U.S. government when he cruelly and selfishly ended the lives of 168 people in an Oklahoma City federal building, and Osama Bin Laden did not fend off United States imperialism via the 9/11 terror attacks.
The same is true of the subject of this book, who I am startled to have never heard of.
In 1970, at the height of the student protest movements against the Vietnam War, a research facility at the University of Wisconsin was destroyed in one of the most expensive acts of sabotage in U.S. history. The four young radicals behind the massive bombing, their lives, beliefs, and escape, are told with riveting detail in this bold narrative nonfiction work that, like any good book of its kind, is about so much more than the event at its center.
Tom Bates has a very personal connection to the events that took place, the riots, rallies, and political fervor that swept up the college, and it's clear just from the first chapter. His passion and candor sear the reader and make for an immensely readable history of one of the most tense and fraught times in U.S. history. Casual mentions of "radicals" being stalked and surveilled by the FBI, or drug dealers receiving approval to bounty hunt in Canada, leap out and grab you, immersing you in the insanity of the era.
Bates is also skilled at creating character portraits. Karl Armstrong in particularly is vividly rendered as a complex, conflicted, and flawed man. Though his actions are clearly viewed as reprehensible in the eyes of the author, Bates is a humanist who sees people as people, warts and all. To quote from the intro: "The truth is relative."
However, I had a difficult time believing just HOW relative the truth gets at certain points in the book, which leads to my biggest gripe: The political skew. Authors will always have opinions, yes. But at certain points, Bates' more centrist leanings get in the way of conveying the facts of the case. His agreeing with the Chicago PD on Fred Hampton's death being justified has, to put it lightly, not aged well. Meanwhile, some details leap out as being questionable in their veracity (did Jewish storeowners really yell "not again" as their windows were being broken?). Curiously, the book lacks any citations, making it impossible to verify the details.
Personal gripes aside, this is still a fantastic book, and a criminally under-read one at that. Find a copy! Read it! It will grip you right away!!!!!
Nowhere is that more clear than in the realm of domestic terror and sabotage. Timothy Mcveigh failed to start a war against the U.S. government when he cruelly and selfishly ended the lives of 168 people in an Oklahoma City federal building, and Osama Bin Laden did not fend off United States imperialism via the 9/11 terror attacks.
The same is true of the subject of this book, who I am startled to have never heard of.
In 1970, at the height of the student protest movements against the Vietnam War, a research facility at the University of Wisconsin was destroyed in one of the most expensive acts of sabotage in U.S. history. The four young radicals behind the massive bombing, their lives, beliefs, and escape, are told with riveting detail in this bold narrative nonfiction work that, like any good book of its kind, is about so much more than the event at its center.
Tom Bates has a very personal connection to the events that took place, the riots, rallies, and political fervor that swept up the college, and it's clear just from the first chapter. His passion and candor sear the reader and make for an immensely readable history of one of the most tense and fraught times in U.S. history. Casual mentions of "radicals" being stalked and surveilled by the FBI, or drug dealers receiving approval to bounty hunt in Canada, leap out and grab you, immersing you in the insanity of the era.
Bates is also skilled at creating character portraits. Karl Armstrong in particularly is vividly rendered as a complex, conflicted, and flawed man. Though his actions are clearly viewed as reprehensible in the eyes of the author, Bates is a humanist who sees people as people, warts and all. To quote from the intro: "The truth is relative."
However, I had a difficult time believing just HOW relative the truth gets at certain points in the book, which leads to my biggest gripe: The political skew. Authors will always have opinions, yes. But at certain points, Bates' more centrist leanings get in the way of conveying the facts of the case. His agreeing with the Chicago PD on Fred Hampton's death being justified has, to put it lightly, not aged well. Meanwhile, some details leap out as being questionable in their veracity (did Jewish storeowners really yell "not again" as their windows were being broken?). Curiously, the book lacks any citations, making it impossible to verify the details.
Personal gripes aside, this is still a fantastic book, and a criminally under-read one at that. Find a copy! Read it! It will grip you right away!!!!!
July 24, 2013
Now that was interesting.
I'm so surprised! Picking up this beast about the 1970 bombing of Sterling Hall at UW, I was pretty certain it was going to be a snoozefest. But, it was recommended to me in a Philosophy class I took at, you guessed it, the University of Wisconsin Madison. The topic intrigued me just enough to plunge in. Still, as I cracked open the binding to this 465 page brick published over 10 years ago I told myself, I'll just skim it.
Turns out, I didn't want to. Bates did a hell of a job with this book. Now, I'll admit, he gets far too detailed. You're going to learn about every little bit about every potential "character" in this story about the bombing of AMRC (nowadays, simply known at Sterling Hall). Having finished the book, I still don't think knowing the intricacies of what one of the bomber's sister's had for breakfast is really important.
Despite the maddening detail, it's an astounding book. If you aren't familiar with southern Wisconsin or the Madison campus, you probably won't enjoy reading it, but if you are, you just might find it as fascinating as I did. Mostly, I'm shocked about how little I knew about this, having spent 6 years living on campus. Completely naive prior to reading this book, I truly never understood just how dangerous and scary a place my beloved campus was. I never new how powerful this bomb was, for how long the manhunt went on, how it still goes on, how significant the damage was in money and in politics. Just one generation later and these realities have been completely erased from the place I so truly identify with. This book is incredible, and, even if the brick cannot be completely consumed, I think Madison alumni should know about this.
Lastly, I also want to give Bates kudos for his journalistic writing. Sometimes it seems his opinion sway one way, and then the other. It's an excellent perspective.
I'm so surprised! Picking up this beast about the 1970 bombing of Sterling Hall at UW, I was pretty certain it was going to be a snoozefest. But, it was recommended to me in a Philosophy class I took at, you guessed it, the University of Wisconsin Madison. The topic intrigued me just enough to plunge in. Still, as I cracked open the binding to this 465 page brick published over 10 years ago I told myself, I'll just skim it.
Turns out, I didn't want to. Bates did a hell of a job with this book. Now, I'll admit, he gets far too detailed. You're going to learn about every little bit about every potential "character" in this story about the bombing of AMRC (nowadays, simply known at Sterling Hall). Having finished the book, I still don't think knowing the intricacies of what one of the bomber's sister's had for breakfast is really important.
Despite the maddening detail, it's an astounding book. If you aren't familiar with southern Wisconsin or the Madison campus, you probably won't enjoy reading it, but if you are, you just might find it as fascinating as I did. Mostly, I'm shocked about how little I knew about this, having spent 6 years living on campus. Completely naive prior to reading this book, I truly never understood just how dangerous and scary a place my beloved campus was. I never new how powerful this bomb was, for how long the manhunt went on, how it still goes on, how significant the damage was in money and in politics. Just one generation later and these realities have been completely erased from the place I so truly identify with. This book is incredible, and, even if the brick cannot be completely consumed, I think Madison alumni should know about this.
Lastly, I also want to give Bates kudos for his journalistic writing. Sometimes it seems his opinion sway one way, and then the other. It's an excellent perspective.
September 9, 2020
Get the story of the lead up to the 1970 bombing of Sterling Hall on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus. Reads like a history/crime/psychological thriller all at once. The fact that it is non-fiction adds to the intrigue and appeal in reading the book.
February 22, 2011
Very interesting book but it sure does drag! Talk about homegrown terrorism!
February 9, 2017
Picked up Rads recommended to me by Mitch McNeil. Somehow this 1992 book slipped by the radar. Fascinating look at the student campus uprisings of the 60's. I was too young to be aware of the details of the time, Rads does a great job of portraying the country divided by an unpopular war.
This book has much in common with other non-fiction I have watched coming out of Wisconsin. I will call it the Wisconsin Lost Souls genre. Netflix's "Making a Murderer", HBO's "Beware of Slenderman" the Doc "American Movie" and Harter's "Winter of Frozen Dreams" (good book - bad movie). All have in common Wisconsinites who on the surface are traditional midwest normal but underneath simmers a seathing weirdness. The stories of Karl Armstrong, Steven Avery, Mark Borchardt, and Jeremy Davies have in common this Wisconsin curse.
I was visiting San Francisco with my family when the bomb exploded. I remember the aftermath when we returned to Madison. My father's office in the Old Chemistry building was destroyed. I have a vivid memory of walking through the remains of the labs, twisted microscopes, broken flasks and burned stacks of research data. A testament to the stupidity of using violence to fight violence.
This book has much in common with other non-fiction I have watched coming out of Wisconsin. I will call it the Wisconsin Lost Souls genre. Netflix's "Making a Murderer", HBO's "Beware of Slenderman" the Doc "American Movie" and Harter's "Winter of Frozen Dreams" (good book - bad movie). All have in common Wisconsinites who on the surface are traditional midwest normal but underneath simmers a seathing weirdness. The stories of Karl Armstrong, Steven Avery, Mark Borchardt, and Jeremy Davies have in common this Wisconsin curse.
I was visiting San Francisco with my family when the bomb exploded. I remember the aftermath when we returned to Madison. My father's office in the Old Chemistry building was destroyed. I have a vivid memory of walking through the remains of the labs, twisted microscopes, broken flasks and burned stacks of research data. A testament to the stupidity of using violence to fight violence.
May 22, 2017
I don't know if I would have enjoyed this nearly as much if I didn't live in Madison (I even lived in the same house that Eliot lived in on Spaight St.), but as someone who adores local history this was a great read.
April 5, 2018
exceptional book about the Madison in the late 60s. full disclosure, it's my alma mater.
February 11, 2024
Interesting, but riddled with errors.
December 5, 2008
well. this was a little bit ridiculous. okay, background: in 1970, this hippie wingnut character thought it would be a cool idea to plant a bomb at the army math research center on the university of winsconsin campus in madison. there was some research going on there that was funded by & benefited the united states army, which was, of course, at the time engaged in the highly unpopular invasion of vietnam. tons of people in the late 60s & early 70s were bombing ROTC offices, research labs, government offices, recruitments centers, memorial statuary, etc. some estimates have the figure at over one hundred bombings a day. i think maybe bombing shit was a lot easier back then. fewer security cameras & such forth. anyway, this guy recruited a couple of pals & they hatched their scheme. they sourced materials & built their bomb & planted it & drove away & called in the threat & everything looked like it was going off without a hitch. but they didn't bank on a research scientist--a grad student at the university (as jared will hopefully be soon)--staying in his lab late to do some work. the student died in the blast--one of the very few people to have ever died in any of these hundreds of bombings that were orchestrated in this time period. the bombers were arrested. at some point, they also wanted to do some kind of ridiculous bombing from one of those six-seater prop planes. what the eff? anyway, this book goes into the backgrounds, family histories, & political leanings of all the bombers involved as well as the scientist who died, & contextualizes the historical opposition to the war & the home-grown symbolic violence that was employed in protest & overall gives a really good overview of the whole situation. all the bombers are long out of jail now & the main dude continued to live in madison, where he opened an ice cream parlor or some ridiculous shit like that. really, it was a pretty good book. a must-read for anyone interested in the actual subject of the army math bombing, & probably a good read for people curious about the opposition to the vietnam war in general, though there are other books that offer a little more breadth & scope of analysis.
December 9, 2013
For a professional editor, the author, Tom Bates, is a very clunky writer. Just as one example - he writes that a certain person is fixated on "mammary glands." Come on, Tom.
This is either a pretty critical look at the four people who bombed the Army Math Research Center building in Madison, Wisconsin in 1970, or an accurate portrayal of just how intellectually barren their motivations were. I can't tell. There isn't much out there to weigh this particular account against.
The book has big gaps in it. It doesn't do a great job of setting the context. He doesn't support the context by using a thesis statement, then supporting it with the fabric a reader of historical works needs to a., feel like she has enough information, and b., that she can trust the author. The only place this isn't so is in his portrayal of Karl Armstrong. Rather than a big movement hero, Armstrong comes off as a person with no ethical or moral compass, the kind of person who idolizes an uncle who is a lifelong criminal that supports himself by ripping off the poor and middle class people around him, at the same time he is sure that his bombings are needed to end the war in Vietnam.
At bombings, Armstrong was incompetent. He was the 3 Stooges of bombing rolled into one person. One example is firebombing what he thought was the ROTC building but turned out to be the UW Primate Research Lab. Those poor monkeys had enough trouble, for god's sake. Of course, there was one notable exception - the Army Math Research Center. Even here, his incompetence played out, as well as his telling lack of ethics or political awareness. He knew there were people inside - he saw the lights on, he observed a bicycled parked outside, he knew that only three floors of the building belonged to the AMRC, he knew that 5 minutes' warning was not enough for the authorities to clear the building, yet, he set the fuse and then ran.
This is probably only interesting to someone who lived in Madison or Wisconsin during the period before, during and after the bombing. Probably not worth slogging through for anyone else.
This is either a pretty critical look at the four people who bombed the Army Math Research Center building in Madison, Wisconsin in 1970, or an accurate portrayal of just how intellectually barren their motivations were. I can't tell. There isn't much out there to weigh this particular account against.
The book has big gaps in it. It doesn't do a great job of setting the context. He doesn't support the context by using a thesis statement, then supporting it with the fabric a reader of historical works needs to a., feel like she has enough information, and b., that she can trust the author. The only place this isn't so is in his portrayal of Karl Armstrong. Rather than a big movement hero, Armstrong comes off as a person with no ethical or moral compass, the kind of person who idolizes an uncle who is a lifelong criminal that supports himself by ripping off the poor and middle class people around him, at the same time he is sure that his bombings are needed to end the war in Vietnam.
At bombings, Armstrong was incompetent. He was the 3 Stooges of bombing rolled into one person. One example is firebombing what he thought was the ROTC building but turned out to be the UW Primate Research Lab. Those poor monkeys had enough trouble, for god's sake. Of course, there was one notable exception - the Army Math Research Center. Even here, his incompetence played out, as well as his telling lack of ethics or political awareness. He knew there were people inside - he saw the lights on, he observed a bicycled parked outside, he knew that only three floors of the building belonged to the AMRC, he knew that 5 minutes' warning was not enough for the authorities to clear the building, yet, he set the fuse and then ran.
This is probably only interesting to someone who lived in Madison or Wisconsin during the period before, during and after the bombing. Probably not worth slogging through for anyone else.
February 5, 2014
I got this book many years ago, read it and was impressed with it at the time. This is a review of my first reread since the 1990s.
On the whole the book holds up well as a work of social history, although it feels at times that Bates tries too hard to discredit the motives of the terrorist cell to highlight their personal aimlessness and faddish radicalism rather than tie it to a wider and more general societal malaise and feeling of powerlessness during the wind down from the 1960s.
Aside from early framing, Bates never clearly addresses is the impact this bombing would have had if it happened two years earlier, when it would have fit in nicely with the anarchic and increasingly violent environment surrounding the anti-war movement. Instead the bombers killed an bystander working in a primate lab a few months after the shootings at Kent State, a fact that stripped them of any claim to the moral high ground and drew attention to the essential nihilism of their motives. Despite Bates' claims, and partly through personal experience with radicals of similar stripe, I can't see that there is so clear a distinction between the motives of the Yippies, the Black Panthers, and the Madison bombers. For that matter, it is not that strikingly different from that held by the Founding Fathers had when they threw tea into Boston Harbor. The primary motive in each case was to bring attention, to start a process of change, to express rage at an injustice.
The judgement of history is what sorts out if your choice of action was well suited to effect change, and if your revolution was worth fighting for. Clearly the Madison bombers fail badly in all measures. Bates is right to identify them as feckless ideologues presenting a clear threat to the social good, but to claim that they failed to spark a revolution through poor planning and a lack of a real philosophy is missing the point that the nation's tolerance of radical violence was already exhausted; that the anti-war movement was already over and that terrorism became something other nations do to us.
On the whole the book holds up well as a work of social history, although it feels at times that Bates tries too hard to discredit the motives of the terrorist cell to highlight their personal aimlessness and faddish radicalism rather than tie it to a wider and more general societal malaise and feeling of powerlessness during the wind down from the 1960s.
Aside from early framing, Bates never clearly addresses is the impact this bombing would have had if it happened two years earlier, when it would have fit in nicely with the anarchic and increasingly violent environment surrounding the anti-war movement. Instead the bombers killed an bystander working in a primate lab a few months after the shootings at Kent State, a fact that stripped them of any claim to the moral high ground and drew attention to the essential nihilism of their motives. Despite Bates' claims, and partly through personal experience with radicals of similar stripe, I can't see that there is so clear a distinction between the motives of the Yippies, the Black Panthers, and the Madison bombers. For that matter, it is not that strikingly different from that held by the Founding Fathers had when they threw tea into Boston Harbor. The primary motive in each case was to bring attention, to start a process of change, to express rage at an injustice.
The judgement of history is what sorts out if your choice of action was well suited to effect change, and if your revolution was worth fighting for. Clearly the Madison bombers fail badly in all measures. Bates is right to identify them as feckless ideologues presenting a clear threat to the social good, but to claim that they failed to spark a revolution through poor planning and a lack of a real philosophy is missing the point that the nation's tolerance of radical violence was already exhausted; that the anti-war movement was already over and that terrorism became something other nations do to us.
February 19, 2017
Maybe the best book on the 60s/70s I've read. Superb and readable.
June 24, 2008
Bates often underscores the class warfare that bubbled beneath the surface of the various anti-war movements. In the case of Madison: lots of privileged east-coast protest kids vs. the blue-collar locals (mostly cops). The one student who served time for the bombing, Karl Armstrong, was actually a blue collar local who was trying to impress his new radical upper-crust buddies. Sad story, but often hilarious, especially the story of Karl's attempt to air-bomb the Badger Ordnance Works with a Cessna and some mayonnaise jars full of kerosene.
January 10, 2013
I really enjoyed this book as a person who grew up in the Madison area, though a bit later than this period. I think it keeps the players in perspective, revealing them as naive idealists full of angst that took a bad idea much too far. As a companion piece, you'll want to also read David Marines' They Marched into Sunlight, but I do find that David is a better writer.
April 11, 2011
So it may have taken my four months (or more) to finish this book but I really liked it. I'm sure the writing could have been more engaging but it's really neat to read about Madison in a different time and to learn that the Nitty Gritty wasn't always the fratboy birthday bar. Read it.
May 2, 2008
Such an interesting story. Because it focuses just on a small group of people in Madison you come away learning much more about the late 60's than reading just a general history.
September 22, 2009
I read this a good ten years ago and it was very interesting. Of course, being a Madison graduate I am a little biased.
September 29, 2011
Thorough look at the circumstances that led Karlton Armstrong and three co-conspirators to set off a powerful bomb that brought the anti-war movement to an end. But the story doesn't end there.
October 13, 2015
local history, little lengthy and editorial
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