Los Angeles Times review:
Oregonian review:
Christian Science Monitor review and podcast:
Grist interview:
Counterpunch interview:
"An engaged and engaging account of one of the most interesting chapters in American environmental history, this book will make you re-examine some perhaps superficial beliefs about protest and nonviolence and radicalism." -- Bill McKibben, editor, "American Earth: Environmental Writing Since Thoreau"
"Dean Kuipers takes you blindfolded on the back of a donkey deep into the jungles of the eco guerrillas. No one knows the underground world of the environmental movement better then Kuipers and he writes with a breathtaking imeadiecy that places the reader in the middle of the action as we explore every turn of events and all of the major personalities in the campaign that made Rod Cornado public enemy number one to the FBI and other law enforcement agencies. You may not agree with this band of rebels, but you will never see them the same again. Write or wrong, they represent the passion and the commitment of a movement dedicated to the most important task we face as a spieces; saving the world from ourselves."
Mike Roselle, cofounder, Earth First!, Rainforest Action Network, Ruckus Society; author of "Treespiker."
"Dean Kuipers has captured the essence of the Rodney Coronado I knew decades ago: a smart, self-sacrificing, funny, daring, driven, totally justice-oriented "warrior" for Native American human beings, Native American animals and the Native American ecosystem - none of which he could imagine a person should sit back and watch be belittled, harmed and destroyed. Many people may shake their heads at his lawbreaking but, if they are honest, they know that young people - and Coronado was young when the Spirit moved him - are often justifiably impatient with exploitive systems that are ruled mostly by big business and moneyed interests, and by that almost immovable boulder, our government. Coronado took it upon himself to right immense wrongs, and while he may have burned an empty building or two or more, he never wished to, and never did, hurt man or mouse. All social movements have their Rodney Coronados and, like it or lump it, they are all the better for it. It takes many different styles of activism to bring about change, as much as we might prefer that it were not so. I wish him strength in his prison cell, strength to share with his beautiful family, and the strength to retain those parts of his character that have helped challenge oppression of the most abused individuals on earth: the animal nations."
- Ingrid E. Newkirk, PETA founder and author of "One can Make a Difference" and "Free the Animals! The Untold story of the ALF in America."
"Los Angeles Times editor Kuipers (Burning Rainbow Farm, 2006, etc.) delivers a searing narrative on the fringe animal-activist movement.
Part deep ecologist, part native spiritualist, part renegade, Rod Coronado found his calling as an activist-saboteur while taking part as a teenager in the much-publicized sinking of two whaling ships in Reykjavik, Iceland. Over the next decade, he would narrow his focus to saving animals bred to slaughter for their fur, targeting hundreds of fur farms and affiliated university labs across the country. In a suspenseful scene that reads like an episode from a mystery novel, the author details how Coronado and his accomplices pulled off a multifaceted raid at Washington State University, where they freed coyotes and mink and destroyed laboratory files. The communiqué he faxed to the Associated Press the following day read, "No industry or individual is safe from the rising tide of fur animal liberation." With this public, thinly veiled threat, Coronado brought an activist identity to maturity. Suddenly his vehemently nonviolent-though often destructive-trail of sabotage was labeled "terrorism," and the entire movement was forced to account for his actions, enduring raids by Feds and ire from the fur and medical communities. By 2006, so many activists had been handed harsh sentences for acts of eco-terrorism under the broad prosecutorial reach of the Patriot Act that the animal-rights community dubbed it the "Green Scare." "Their opponents controlled the conversation by controlling the definition of nonviolence," writes Kuipers, making a salient point with deep implications in an era of diluted individual rights. Despite his decades of experience covering the radical environmental movement, the author is careful to remain an objective narrator, presenting much contextual detail and allowing Coronado and his peers' brimming passion to tell the story.
A provocative and careful testament to the ever-changing definition of activism.
- Kirkus Reviews
"Passions run high when it comes to environmentalism, yet few condone the extreme tactics of such groups as the Animal Liberation Front. Los Angeles Times editor Kuipers, author of the counterculture saga Burning Rainbow Farm (2006), focuses on eco warrior, some would say eco terrorist, Ron Coronado as a key to the incendiary side of green activism. A Californian of Yaqui descent, Coronado began demonstrating in support of animal rights while still in grade school. He joined Sea Shepherd, a direct action anti-whaling group, instead of going to college, thus launching a life of illegal protest that turned him into a saboteur, arsonist, and fugitive; landed him in jail; and embroiled him in an infamous legal case that fuses freedom-of-speech issues with ramped-up domestic-terrorist laws. Coronado's outlaw adventures for the cause are electrifying, from his covert videotaping of crimes against animals to his fiery destruction of fur farms and research labs, and his spiritual and moral struggles are equally compelling and genuinely instructive. As Kuipers meticulously tracks Coronado's intense commitment to animals and eventual rejection of violence, he illuminates the tenets of deep ecology and animal rights and provides an invaluable history of radical environmentalism, a force that may gain momentum as mainstream society fails to respond to looming crises."
- Donna Seaman, Booklist