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Dangerous, Dirty, Violent and Young

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What to expect

The son of the FBI's most wanted woman tells the electrifying story of a childhood on the run – and a half-century of revolutionary struggle in America

We all grapple with a past that defines us: culture, religion, a family story. But what happens when you inherit a revolution?

Zayd Ayers Dohrn was born underground. His parents were fugitives after a decade fighting the US government; his mother co-founded a leftist radical group called the Weathermen, and replaced Angela Davis on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List. All his life, Dohrn’s parents said his birth marked a clean break with violent revolutionary struggle but, in this explosive memoir, he discovers that story wasn’t entirely true.

Dangerous, Dirty, Violent and Young offers a page-turning account of an infamous family and their life in hiding, as well as the political battles of the ‘60s and ‘70s. At its heart it asks big questions: how can a child survive when the place they feel safest – with their family – also puts them in danger? What does it mean to be a good revolutionary, and how should young people today try to change the world?

'A fascinating journey that illuminates, in often thought-provoking ways, the politics of violence in radical movements' Angela Davis

© Zayd Ayers Dohrn 2026 (P) Penguin Audio 2026

Critics Review

'Riveting as a thriller, this wise and searching memoir about a family, an era, and a movement tells a story about America we’ve never quite heard before... It’s fearless, big-hearted, and profound. I simply couldn’t put it down.'
Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild
'Zayd Ayers Dohrn’s deeply moving Dangerous Dirty Violent & Young swept me away. A mix of memoir, history and journalism, it’s like nothing I’ve ever read. Dohrn isn’t afraid to wrestle with the moral ambiguities of the time and of those at the center of his life. It’s an astonishing story written with such an open heart.'
Alex Kotlowitz, author of There Are No Children Here
Conjured into the present by a genuine literary master, recollecting what he saw as a sensitive child, the oft-told tale of the Weathermen catches fire here, illuminating a strangeness with which we all wrestle: the mysteries of family resentment and filial love.
Rick Perlstein, author of Nixonland
'What a book! Exhilarating, maddening, contemplative, and mournful. The book arrives at a critical time ...Through deft and exquisite storytelling, Zayd Ayers Dohrn distills a history that shows...how each of us must grapple with the moral and human dimensions of our movements.'
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, author of How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective
'Zayd Dohrn’s journey into the past is a rare and profound gift — one that breaks your heart even as it quietly fills it with hope. Each page is at once beautiful, painful, and powerful. It is everything we need right now: deeply moving and urgent.'
Heather Ann Thompson, author of Blood in the Water: the Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and its Legacy.
Author Zayd Ayers Dohrn
Narrator Zayd Ayers Dohrn
Duration 11 hours and 9 minutes
Release Date
ISBN 9781529974775
Format Audiobook
Publisher Random House
Genre Memoirs, Revolutionary groups and movements, Revolutions, uprisings, rebellions, Social and cultural history
Availability AU, GB, IE

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