House on Fire: Patty Hearst, the SLA and Seduction of Revolution

Fifty years ago, a group of self-described revolutionaries did something that shocked the world. They declared war on America, assassinated a school superintendent, robbed several banks, bombed several police cars, murdered an innocent bystander, kidnapped heiress Patty Hearst and convinced her to join their cause, before most of the group burned to death in a fiery shootout in Los Angeles, right on live television. This book is about everything that made that story possible - and almost none of it is what I expected to find when I started looking. I came to this project with a set of beliefs about the Symbionese Liberation Army and the era that produced them. I had to dismantle most of those beliefs before I could tell this story honestly. This is the story of who the SLA really were, what they actually believed, and what it tells us about a nation that is still grappling with the same failures that produced them. But before I tell you about the Symbionese Liberation Army, I have to tell you first about the America that produced them. >Based on the 2026 Webcast Series at More to the Story: Crime, Culture and Consequence (at Youtube at Spotify)