The best books to make you a teenage radical

Torch traces the evolution of a revolution.

In 1969, Czechoslovakia was being engulfed by the Soviet Union. Young people throughout the country were fighting to hold on to their freedom. Government crackdowns led to violence and despair. Choices were limited, and people became increasingly desperate.

Miller-Lachmann takes us to the heart of that time, and into the pain of young people watching their futures disappear. What I love about this book is the complex personalities of the teenagers at the heart of the story. You share their fears as they come to know more about themselves, their parents, and the terrifying world around them.

Their passions and resourcefulness are inspirational. It is a book about what is lost and gained as people fight the rise of authoritarianism. It is both a story from the past, and a cautionary tale.

Cathy Wilkerson was one of The Weather Underground. She became notorious because The Weather Underground was using her father’s townhouse in Greenwich Village when a bomb was accidentally detonated, killing three people and destroyed the building.

What I love about this book is that it is by a woman in the movement. Most of the people who have written about The Weatherman and the various radical movements of the sixties are men and they are writing from a very different perspective. The women in the movement were dealing not only with their desire to end the war and overturn the government, but with pushing for a feminist revolution amongside their male comrades.

Wilkerson reflects on her radicalization as a teenager, on joining the movement, and on her struggles within the movement. The book makes dynamic reading for anyone interested in social change.

Thai Jones is the son of Jeff Jones and Eleanor Stein, members of the Weather Underground. He was a toddler in 1981 when his parents were arrested at gunpoint by team of FBI agents.

I have always wondered about the second generation, the children of radicals. As it turns out, Eleanor Stein was also a child of radicals – her mother Annie Stein was a member of the Communist Party during the 1930s and through into the 50s, when she, too, had to go underground. 

I love the intergenerational stories in this book. Jones, in trying to discover his own roots, explores the background of his maternal and paternal grandparents and finds people who were all committed to making the world a better place whether it was through Quakerism or Communism, farming or bombing. It’s a snapshot of another America—one filled with ideals that start in teenage years.

The Things They Carried has become a classic book of the Vietnam War.

It is a personal view into the lives of the men who struggled and died during that misguided war. O’Brien uses the idea of “the things they carried” both literally and figuratively. These are young men, most still only teenagers, who must carry huge amounts of gear into war. They come back burdened with so much more—things no longer be seen except by others who carry the same, their comrades who were there with them.

The stories are filled with pathos, humour, honesty, and tragedy. It helps us to understand and feel compassion for the generation of men who fought in that war.

Black Helicopters is a terrifying book.

A fast-paced thriller, it takes you inside a radical survivalist cult from the perspective of the children who are growing up there. We’re immediately in a world that has its own rules. We’re reminded that children and young people know only what we tell them, and they do not question their parent’s choices easily. 

When a family is attacked, children will do anything to defend their world. Black Helicopters turns everything upside down in terms of your expectations and understanding, and makes you live inside a world under siege. It challenges all of your preconceptions and beliefs.