Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read.
Start by marking “Street-Fighting Years: An Autobiography of the Sixties” as Want to Read:
Enlarge cover
Rate this book
Clear rating
Open Preview

Street-Fighting Years: An Autobiography of the Sixties

3.85 of 5 stars 3.85 · rating details · 101 ratings · 3 reviews
In this new edition of his memoirs, Tariq Ali revisits his formative years as a young radical. It is a story that takes us from Paris and Prague to Hanoi and Bolivia, encountering along the way Malcolm X, Bertrand Russell, Marlon Brando, Henry Kissinger, and Mick Jagger.

Ali captures the mood and energy of those years as he tracks the growing significance of the nascent pro
...more
Paperback , 403 pages
Published May 17th 2005 by Verso (first published 1987)
more details... edit details

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Reader Q&A

To ask other readers questions about Street-Fighting Years , please sign up .

Be the first to ask a question about Street-Fighting Years

This book is not yet featured on Listopia. Add this book to your favorite list »

Community Reviews

(showing 1-30 of 239)
filter | sort : default (?) | rating details
Carlo
Tariq Ali's memoir is a great read. Ali, an international socialist activist/intellectual, includes photos which add flavor: among journalists with Chou-en-Lai in Lahore, with Malcolm X in Oxford, visiting Regis Debray imprisoned in Bolivia, with the War Crimes Tribunal in Vietnam, speaking during 1969 insurrection in Pakistan, walking in the streets with May 68er Daniel Cohn-Bendit, celebrating Belgian Marxist Ernest Mandel, posing with Derek Jarman on the Wittgenstein set, dinner with Edward S ...more
Obscuranta Hideypants
Oct 03, 2007 Obscuranta Hideypants rated it 1 of 5 stars
Recommends it for: those who live in the past
I have a lot of trouble with Tariq Ali, and I think this book embopdies the majority of it- take some misguided protest-politics, mix in a bit of cult of personality and reminiscences about the Good Old Days and here we are. As has become his habit, Ali glorifies an era which, ultimately collapsed into the decadence of the eighties- driven in large part by ex radicals who were just along for the ride.

Protest politics is a dead end, something which needs to be studied, not glorified, and certain
...more
Gus
Should have been great; unfortunately Ali writes like a tired political intellectual, and manages to drain nearly every bit of life, verve, and energy from one of the most exciting and dynamic periods in recent history.
Joseph
Joseph marked it as to-read
Oct 01, 2015
Yupa
Yupa marked it as to-read
Sep 30, 2015
Andrew
Andrew marked it as to-read
Sep 17, 2015
Adeel
Adeel marked it as to-read
Aug 08, 2015
Topsy
Topsy marked it as to-read
Jul 31, 2015
Vanch3d
Vanch3d marked it as to-read
Jul 19, 2015
Jamespc
Jamespc marked it as to-read
Jul 05, 2015
Christos
Christos marked it as to-read
May 26, 2015
Akshay
Akshay marked it as to-read
May 19, 2015
Amar Baines
Amar Baines marked it as to-read
May 06, 2015
Krista
Krista marked it as to-read
May 01, 2015
John R
John R marked it as to-read
Apr 30, 2015
Jeremy
Jeremy marked it as to-read
Feb 19, 2015
There are no discussion topics on this book yet. Be the first to start one »
  • The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House
  • The Beach Beneath the Street: The Everyday Life and Glorious Times of the Situationist International
  • Rethinking Camelot: JFK, the Vietnam War and US Political Culture
  • The Hidden War: A Russian Journalist's Account of the Soviet War in Afghanistan
  • The Phoenix Program: America's Use of Terror in Vietnam
  • The Resistance: The French Fight Against the Nazis
  • Doing Battle: The Making of a Skeptic
  • The Trials of Lenny Bruce: The Rise and Fall of an American Icon
  • The Russian Anarchists
  • Buda's Wagon: A Brief History of the Car Bomb
  • Kent State:  What Happened and Why
  • There's A Riot Going On: Revolutionaries, Rock Stars, and the Rise and Fall of '60s Counter-Culture
  • Road from Ar Ramadi: The Private Rebellion of Sergeant Camilo Mejia
  • 1967: Israel, the War, and the Year that Transformed the Middle East
  • Going Postal: Rage, Murder, and Rebellion from Reagan's Workplaces to Clinton's Columbine and Beyond
  • Baghdad Burning II: More Girl Blog from Iraq
  • Blowback: America's Recruitment of Nazis and Its Destructive Impact on Our Domestic and Foreign Policy
  • The Fate of the Earth
46247
Tariq Ali (Punjabi, Urdu: طارق علی) (born 21 October 1943) is a British-Pakistani historian, novelist, filmmaker, political campaigner, and commentator. He is a member of the editorial committee of the New Left Review and Sin Permiso, and regularly contributes to The Guardian, CounterPunch, and the London Review of Books.

He is the author of several books, including Can Pakistan Survive? The Death
...more
More about Tariq Ali...
Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree (Islam Quintet, #1) The Book of Saladin (Islam Quintet, #2) The Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity The Stone Woman (Islam Quintet, #3) The Duel: Pakistan on the Flight Path of American Power

Share This Book