A Searing Memoir of Being Raised by Radicals on the Run

 

Zayd Dohrn, age 4, with his parents, Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, outside federal court in New York in May 1982.

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A Searing Memoir of Being Raised by Radicals on the Run

Zayd Ayers Dohrn’s parents were leaders of the Weather Underground. His new book traces how their revolutionary ideals collided with their family life.Credit...

DANGEROUS, DIRTY, VIOLENT, AND YOUNG: A Fugitive Family in the Revolutionary Underground, by Zayd Ayers 

By Dana Spiotta

May 19, 2026

There have been numerous novels, films and memoirs inspired by the American radical left of the late 1960s and early ’70s, but Zayd Ayers Dohrn’s fascinating and affecting memoir, “Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, and Young,” stands out as definitive. Dohrn is both an outsider and an insider, having been born into the underground: His parents are the former Weathermen Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers. Dohrn’s dual perspective yields a meticulously researched history of an explosive time as well as a deeply felt, intimate portrait of a very unusual family.

 

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Review

Dangerous, Dirty, Violent & Young by Zayd Ayers Dohrn review – child of the revolution

The son of fugitive leaders of the militant Weather Underground recounts his chaotic, peripatetic upbringing

Peter Carty

Friday 26 June 2026

Every aspect of a family’s life will seem normal to the small children within it; only hindsight can bring what was abnormal into relief. Zayd Ayers Dohrn’s earliest years were spent on the run from the FBI; his parents were members of the revolutionary Weather Underground faction, a group dedicated to the overthrow of the US government.