|
Hell's Angel: The Life and Times of Sonny Barger and the Hell's Angels Motorcycle Club | 
 enlarge | Authors: Sonny Barger, Keith Zimmerman, Kent Zimmerman
Publisher: Harper Paperbacks
Category: Book
List Price: $14.00
Buy Used: $2.94
You Save: $11.06 (79%)
New (33) Used (57) Collectible (2) from $2.94
Avg. Customer Rating:  105 reviews
Sales Rank: 16326
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.3 x 0.8
ISBN: 0060937548
Dewey Decimal Number: 364.1066092
EAN: 9780060937546
ASIN: 0060937548
Publication Date: October 1, 2001
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More.
|
| Also Available In:
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Narrated by the visionary founding member, Hell's Angel provides a fascinating all-access pass to the secret world of the notorious Hell's Angels Motorcycle Club. Sonny Barger recounts the birth of the original Oakland Hell's Angels and the four turbulent decades that followed. Hell's Angel also chronicles the way the HAMC revolutionized the look of the Harley-Davidson motorcycle and built what has become a worldwide bike-riding fraternity, a beacon for freedom-seekers the world over. Dozens of photos, including many from private collections and from noted photographers, provide visual documentation to this extraordinary tale. Never simply a story about motorcycles, colorful characters, and high-speed thrills, Hell's Angel is the ultimate outlaw's tale of loyalty and betrayal, subcultures and brotherhood, and the real price of freedom.
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 100 more reviews...
 Ride With the Angels! August 31, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
An American institution unto itself, the Hell's Angels have inspired every possible reaction from outsiders, from awe, admiration and, of course, fear. No one would argue that the club is made up of choir boys. But no doubt the reality has been so intermixed with the fantastical that separating truth from myth is now almost impossible.
Sonny Barger, though, knows the truth. Although the Hell's Angels are a non-hierarchical organization without a single `leader,' Barger has been one of its more famous public faces for decades, and was instrumental in growing the club, having been there for many of its more (in)famous escapades. Barger recounts many of those adventures here, making HELL'S ANGEL an extremely entertaining read about a subculture very few of us will ever visit off the written page.
It is clear from the writing that Barger is that type who simply does not care what others think of him, and that attitude makes this book even more compelling. Some of the stories are written with the style letting us know exactly what we are dealing with. Writing of their confrontion at Berkeley of war protesters during Vietnam, disgusted at the hippies' anti-Americanism, Barger let's us know that the Angels "let our boots do the talking for us." He holds no illusions about the type of woman who hangs out with the club and describes her in such a way that would lead to a quick visit from the speech police at any modern American university. It really is hilarious.
More than just anecdotes, however, HELL'S ANGEL describes the concept of brotherhood among its members that makes it so especially tight. I once volunteered at a health clinic in Cleveland and once a Hell's Angel came in for court mandated counseling. Just released after 18 years in jail, what struck me is that, despite having been imprisoned after only a few months with the club, and despite his lengthy imprisonment, his `brothers' never forgot about him and never abandoned him. Barger describes this tight-knit community allowing one to realize that, for many of its members, it really is family. The first organization to stand firm against a RICO charge, it stood down the feds because not a single member would turn on the others.
Although outsiders in our society may reject them, the Hell's Angels don't reject our society. Any free society must make room for those who voluntarily live on its fringes and one gets the sense that Berger recognizes this. Of course, they may demonstrate their patriotism in their own unique way. It would have been great if the President had taken them up on their offer to send a special band of Angel's into the Vietnamese jungle to take care of the Vietcong. Jeez, we probably would have won!
I met Barger once, at a book signing outside of Cleveland. Despite all the Harleys they ride, he appeared at an Indian motorcycle dealer as protest for Harley-Davidson never acknowledging all the free publicity it received over the years. Barger was a friendly man, though it seemed not the type to put up with garbage. HELL'S ANGEL seems exactly like the type of book written by such a guy. For those who like to read about those subcultures of Americana that really add to the tapestry of this society, put this book on your list.
Interesting August 15, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I would recommend it if you are interested in the biker culture or just motorcycles in general. A good read.
AFFA - Hunter Thompson where are you when we need you most? June 15, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Having grown up in the San Francisco Bay Area during the '60s and early '70s I became aware of the Hells Angels when members of the San Jose chapter trounced a friend of mine for coming back into an Angel hangout (bar) after they'd suggested (strongly) that he leave.
A Hispanic car club, the "Royal Coachmen" (also out of San Jose) was shut down by the Angels when its numbers became a concern for the HAMC. Even then the Angels wielded a great deal of "underground" power and influence, as so well described in Barger's book.
"Hell's Angel" is very subtle as to the shift of the club's direction which is described by Barger upon careful reading. Back in the day the Angels were unsophisticated in their tactics and techniques, and loosely organized. They were also very rough around the edges. Today the club is an incorporated organization with global wide chapters and affiliates, a strong legal network for its members and properties/enterprises, and very much the focus of international law enforcement on a daily basis.
However, I knew the Angels had changed dramatically since the 60s when in Los Angeles on business in the early 90s I ran into two full patch members of the club at a nightspot on Hollywood Blvd. They were clean cut, well groomed, and their "colors" looked as if they'd come out of the dry cleaners that day. As I was leaving and was a bit ahead of them I held the door to the club open and both offered "Thank you" as they passed by.
Yep, the early days as described in detail by Ralph "Sonny" Barger are now long ago lore where the Red & White is concerned.
Barger makes no excuses about the criminal activities he's been involved with and convicted of. His is a well written, graphic memory of the Hells Angels with a look into the future of this organization coming from the man who created it. A "must read" for any law enforcement officer who deals with the 1% outlaw biker subculture - and who wants to be successful as an OMG investigator in terms of background and research.
Finally, with Ruben "Doc" Cavazos' new book on himself as a Mongol and international president of the Mongols - one of seveal arch rivals of the Hells Angels - it is interesting to compare Barger to Cavazos in terms of their backgrounds, upbringing, and commitment to their chosen ways of life at the head of two of the Big Six outlaw motorcycle clubs globally.
Say what you will, Cavazos is no Sonny Barger when it comes to old school outlaw values and traditions, and he is certainly not even in the same class when it comes to organizational abilities and vision.
Hunter Thompson pegged Sonny Barger best in his own legendary best seller on the Angels - a companion book to Barger's tome that is likewise must reading for the best possible view of the brotherhood that is the Hells Angels.
American Cool June 14, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Since he was old enough to wander out onto the streets of Oakland, California, Ralph "Sonny" Barger has done things his own way, viewing the world from his unique, American blue collar perspective. In his work Hells Angel, Sonny shares his life and opens the door to the world of the Outlaw Biker. It's as though the whole biker thing evolved as Sonny evolved, and these days Mr. Barger is held in the highest esteem as the premier elder statesman of the biker world.
And why shouldn't he be? He's certainly earned it. After a life of living on the razor's edge, including drugs, beautiful women, police harassment, hard prison time, fast motorcycles, and keeping a club comprised of some of the most notorious and colorful individuals on the same page, anyone who considers himself a biker knows who Sonny is. If he doesn't, then he's not really a biker, he's one of the legion of wannabes that puts on a make believe patch, somehow trying to emulate what Sonny Barger and a few other hard cases started back in the day.
I read this book coming away with the feeling of what it might be like to view the world from the Outlaw Biker perspective. I learned that many these free spirited men served their country with distinction, have conservative values of family and friends, and actually live the kind of freedom that so many in the non-1%er world fear, yet envy from the safety of their easy chairs.
This book provided what I was looking for and more, and after reading it for the third time I still come away with the same feeling. Hats off to Sonny Barger for giving us a non-apologetic and in-your-face rendition of his turbulent life and times, and a glimpse of the Outlaw Biker world. This book is highly recommended.
"The Sun Never sets on a Hell's Angel Patch." June 11, 2008
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
The microcosm birth of the Hell's Angels motorcycle club evolved in the Fontana/ San Bernardino, California area on April 1957. Ralph Robert Barger,(Sonny) who was only 19 years old, was the founder and leader of the Hell's Angels San Bernardino motorcycle club.
Sonny Barger's book, "Hell's Angel" is the only authorized, genuine story about the, sometimes, but not always, controversial motorcycle club founded by the author himself.
In reading, "Hell's Angel," the reader might disagree, agree and perhaps even sympathize with the story and history of the Hell's Angels' motorcycle club. More often than not different law enforcement agencies classified the Hell's Angels as a `criminal organization' for usurping the American legal system.
It is up to the reader to make his or her own assessment whether those law enforcement agencies were correct in their judgment of the Hell's Angels; or if they were prejudiced in their appraisal of the motorcycle club (MC).
Many believe the original Angels were members of the U.S. Army's 11th Airborne Division; an elite group of paratroopers trained to rain death on the enemy from above, drifting in behind the lines of battle.
"They called themselves the Hells Angels because they flew on silk wings into hell itself, bringing a brutal hope for peace with 20 pounds of TNT strapped to each leg. The nickname was a badge of honor, a mark of invincibility, a wartime emblem pointing out the toughest of the tough. It was a totem to ward off the worst."
"A handful of those original Hells Angels, and many other returning soldiers who had awakened to the nightmare of war, found it difficult to settle into the half-sleep of the American Dream. After living on the edge so long, they found only a depressing fatalism and monotony in jobs, family, mortgages, and college, suburbia and cookie-cutter houses with white-picket fences." And so they joined the MC.
According to Sonny Barger, "The Hell's Angels is an organization; a group of people, who get together to ride motorcycles and have fun, and go to parties." "... Just because certain people in the Hell's Angels have committed crimes in the past does not make the organization a criminal organization."
Under Barger's guidance, the Hells Angels chapters came together, hammering out bylaws, codes of conduct, outlawing the practice of using drugs, choosing patches, colors, tattoos and clubhouses. The Hell's Angel's made sure that no one used their "Patch" who had not been accepted in the MC, or who were not worthy of their motorcycle club. The MC is a close-knit motorcycle club who not only fights to preserve the dignity of their "Patch," but take care, protect, and stand by one another to the fullest.
There were other motorcycle clubs, throughout the United States, who not only rivaled the Hell's Angels but tried to outdo them as well. However, law enforcement organizations did not excoriated those motorcycle clubs as they hammered the anvil of law enforcement against the Hell's Angels.
The Hell's Angel reputation crashed into the public consciousness in 1954 when Marlon Brando starred in "The Wild One," a Hollywood sensation inspired by the rumble at Hollister.
All the while, the Hell's Angels boldness more than irritated all types of law enforcement. And in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the government tried to pin an official organized crime label on the group, trying to prosecute the Hells Angels under laws originally designed to combat the Mafia. The alleged violations of racketeering, influence and corrupt organization (RICO) laws, however, were never proved, with two hung juries that were unable to decide on 38 of 44 separate charges.
There were many high-profile accusations, arrests and acquittals - suggesting either the Angels are slippery or that police like to arrest them despite flimsy evidence. Many believe the truth lies between both theories.
George Christie, longtime president of the Ventura, Calif., chapter, who is considered Barger's second-in-command and likely successor; admits the Hell's Angels are "not monks." Nevertheless, he insists that if they were as bad as police allege, they would've been jailed and disbanded years ago." George Christi adds, "...cops chase Angels because Angels are easy to chase. Finding real criminals is much tougher, and would require investigative initiative beyond pulling over every biker wearing the infamous winged death's-head."
For their part, the Angels continue to deny all criminal charges, and in 1998 happily celebrated their 50th anniversary.
The Angels have grown, in the past 50 years, to include many chapters in the United States, a presence in many countries and a worldwide membership estimated in the thousands.
I recommend, to the interested reader, Sonny Barger's book, "Hell's Angel" before reading any other books, or magazine articles on the subject of the famous motorcycle club; The Hell's Angels.
|
|
|
Powered by Associate-O-Matic
| |
