The Book Review: Tangled family histories

May 26, 2026

A black-and-white photo shows a child walking across stone steps between a man and a woman, all holding hands. The man wears glasses and smiles; the woman carries papers.

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

	By Joumana Khatib

Dear readers,

Welcome back to those of you who observed Memorial Day.

Today I’d like to highlight some coverage of two recent books that draw on fascinating family history. Zayd Ayers Dohrn and Harriet Clark are the children of radical parents: He is a son of Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, who founded the Weathermen (which later evolved into the Weather Underground), and she is the daughter of Judith Clark, a former member of the Weathermen who was imprisoned for decades. Both avoided writing about their families for years. I’m so glad they changed their minds.

Clark’s novel, “The Hill,” traces the relationship between a girl and her radical mother, who is incarcerated under circumstances that resemble those of Clark’s mother. (It’s on my summer reading bucket list — I can’t wait to get started.) Dohrn opted for a nonfiction account; his new memoir, “Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, and Young,” is “definitive,” according to our reviewer, and offers a detailed look at how his parents’ political convictions collided with family life.

The authors also met to discuss their lives and work — particularly the “incomprehension” of their childhoods — and the resulting conversation is fascinating. I found this comment by Dohrn rather poignant, and have been mulling it for days: “Most people’s parents are a secret that gets kept.”

See you on Friday.

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