Abbie Hoffman : American Rebel - 92 edition

Summary: Abbie Hoffman is a symbol of the activist sixties. He was there at the beginning, at the protests against the House Committee on Un-American Activities in San Francisco and as an organizer for the southern civil rights movement. His life fused the radicalism of rebellious hippie youth, the anti-Vietnam War protest movement, and the political agenda of the American Left. Although the revolution that he anticipated proved an illusion in the end, his ideas and id ...show moreeals changed the course of American history.

Abbie Hoffman was more than a ''sixties radical.'' He was one of the most inventive community organizers in American history; his insights into effective political activism hold lessons for activists today. Hoffman was also the quintessential showman, the star and creator of an explosively funny, subversive, and revelatory theater of the street, and the first political theorist to use television advertising techniques to create news. Whether publicizing injustice, promoting hedonism, protesting war, or fighting to save the environment, no one could raise a stink and grab a headline as spectacularly as Abbie Hoffman.

This authoritative biography, written by a comrade of his from the late 1960s, places Hoffman in the social, cultural, and political milieu in which he lived and worked. Marty Jezer focuses on the ideas that informed his politics and describes what happened to the Left and to America when Hoffman put his ideas into action. Jezer admires Hoffman's courage, creativity, and idealism, but is critical of his refusal to set limits on his personal and political life.

Abbie Hoffman: American Rebel reveals a warm, generous, and exciting personality whose private and public lives were often one, whose impact is still apparent, whose life touched and in this book will continue to touch people devoted to justice and progressive change.

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Edition/Copyright: 92
Cover: Print On Demand
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Published: 06/01/1993

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Jezer, Marty :

Marty Jezer is the author of The Dark Ages: Life in the United States, 1945-1960, Home Comfort: Life on Total Loss Farm, Rachel Carson: Biologist and Author, and other books and articles.

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''If Abbie Hoffman was a lost cause, America was a lost cause. In superior U.S. spirit he made mistakes and changed the nation, imprinting an image of revolutionary /libertarian idealist/ hard worker /noble citizen / on minds of generations. . . . Jezer's biography traces an inside history officially disremembered, of activist lineage, ins and outs, secret police thuggery, political adventures and cultural gambles that this radical genius lost and won attempting to win back the planet for the human spirit.''

--Allen Ginsberg

''Here's the Abbie I knew and loved! Marty Jezer has captured him in all his complexity, dedication, humor, and heart.''

--Anita Hoffman

''By far the best account we have of Abbie Hoffman's remarkable life. The book is all at once deeply sympathetic and scrupulously detached--a triumph of judicious empathy.''

--Martin Duberman, Distinguished Professor of History, Lehman/The Graduate School, C.U.N.Y.

Rutgers University Press Web Site, November, 2000