The secret wars of Judi Bari

the long version

Kate Coleman traces Judi Bari’s rise from college activist to would-be Mother Jones of the Redwoods. Drawing on extensive interviews with Bari’s friends and comrades as well as critics, Coleman describes her struggle for selfhood against her husband, against those in her movement who felt that she was not radical enough, and ultimately against the FBI and the State of California. Judi Bari’s wars continued until her death from cancer five years after the explosion that changed her life ­permanently. The Secret Wars of Judy Bari takes us inside the often bizarre world of the Earth First! movement and the back-to-nature counterculture of California’s North Coast. The result is an irresistible combination of biography and social history.