Book excerpt: "Prairie Radical is the memoir of a young man whose life was radically changed when he joined the civil rights movement and spoke out against the war in Vietnam. It is an inside history of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the largest student organization of the 1960s as seen by one of its national officers who spent 1967-68 in the SDS national office at the height of the antiwar movement. It is also the history of the vibrant and innovative SDS chapter at the University of Texas in Austin, one of the Prairie Power strongholds, where the cultural rebellion and the political movement were united. Robert Pardun's story is set within the context of what was happening in Vietnam and interwoven with what we now know was happening inside the government and the FBI."--Jacket.