Guerrilla: The Taking Of Patty Hearst

In the post-9/11 world, the Symbionese Liberation Army is lucky to be remembered as a sick, sad footnote to the history of celebrity scandal, the toy soldiers who kidnapped and brainwashed photogenic newspaper heiress Patty Hearst. But between 1973 and 1975, it waged literal war on the American establishment and held the national news media in its thrall. The SLA's founding members were an incongruous mix of Bay Area-based black convicts and middle-class white radicals whose imaginations were a movie-made mix of "steal from the rich, give to the poor" idealism and revolutionary fervor. Their bond was forged in the white-hot passions of the 1960s: disgust at the war i...