Ravens in the Storm
by Carl Oglesby
(Scribner)
Writing this memoir, Oglesby was able to draw on more than four thousand pages of government intelligence about himself, gathered in the nineteen-sixties during his time as the president of the protest group Students for a Democratic Society. A former defense-industry employee with a high-security clearance, Oglesby became a prominent antiwar figure—he served on an international war-crimes tribunal with Jean-Paul Sartre and was asked to be the Vice-Presidential running mate of the Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver—but he always saw himself as a voice for moderation. This centrist perspective alienated S.D.S.’s militants, including a future leader of the Weathermen, who warned him, “We are not frustrated liberals, Carl. We are enemies of the state.” In the end, Oglesby recounts, he was forced out of S.D.S. on charges of rejecting Marxism-Leninism and possibly being a federal agent. His book is a mournful tribute to the spirit of an age gone awry.
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