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Riding on the Edge: A Motorcycle Outlaw's Tale
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| List Price: | $25.00 |
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Product Description
Ride with author John Hall into the turbulent world of 1960s bike club culture, from the time he joined an upstart motorcycle club from Dixie, and rose to become Long Island chapter president of the Pagans, a club that the FBI called "the most violent criminal organization in America." Follow him into the Pagan heartland of Pennsylvania where he fell in love, got in a roadhouse brawl over a honky-tonk angel, and eventually went to jail for "takin' care a club business." Now after a career as a journalist and college professor, he returns to the violent days of his youth and smashes up stereotypes like he once smashed up bars, resurrecting long-dead brothers, in a style reminiscent of Jack Kerouac and Mark Twain. Hall presents them as they really were: hard living, hard loving, hard drinking, hard fighting rebels, but also hardworking, patriotic, loyal, and lovable characters, and a band of brothers whose outlandish behavior forged an all-American outlaw legend in the tradition of Jesse James, Doc Holliday, John Dillinger, and Pretty Boy Floyd. Outlaws yes, but outlaws as American as apple pie.
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #31096 in Books
- Published on: 2008-09-12
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Hardcover
- 304 pages
Features
- ISBN13: 9780760332764
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
- Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
A former chapter president of the Long Island Pagans, John Hall has done time in the state pen, as well as Penn State, where he taught history, American studies, rhetoric, and mathematics. He also worked as bouncer, bartender, bookmaker, stonemason, professional gambler, law clerk, and freelance journalist. He has written over 400 syndicated opinion columns, which have appeared in over a dozen newspapers, including the Houston Post and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. He has raised seven children, half the time as a single parent. He currently lives in a 127-year-old dilapidated farmhouse in the Appalachian Mountains, where he seeks what George Jean Nathan once described as the three essentials of life: reasonable well prepared food, a moderately alcoholic diet, and the amiable company of amiable women.
Customer Reviews
Superb Effort
"Riding on the Edge" is, IMHO, the finest work of 1%er biker literature on the stands today. Written by an Old School biker and original member of the Pagans MC, this is a thoughtful, respectful and captivating story of what it was like to be a 1960s motorcycle outlaw.
Written by John Hall, today a professional journalist and academic, Hall's book eclipses Sonny Barger's very successful effort (Hell's Angel) and, when compared, makes a mockery of Ruben "Doc" Cavazo's recent book about himself (oh, and the Mongols MC, too).
"Riding" is a wonderful read with the best outlaw biker book cover on the stands to date. Well worth the purchase.
Fact and Fiction
In 2006 John Hall's literary agent James Fitzgerald of New York contacted us about the book. At that time Fitzgerald was informed that John Hall in fact did not have authorization to write, print or publish any thing about the Pagan's MC. John Hall has never contacted the club at all to seek authorization. The book is interesting to read for the most part, however it is by no means a acurate and true account of the 1 1/2 years that John Hall was a member of the club. Not only is it an exageration of his own status and position within the club, but also certain alleged events written of in the book are totally fictional and never happened. For the most part he dropped names of men that are dead now, however others are still alive and atest to the false nature of this personal account of John Hall. John Hall was nothing more than a spoke in a wheel. John Hall is not a original member of the club and does not have the respect or honor that position would grant.
Pagan Ronnie 1%
Pagan's MC
Riding the Edge
I think this book was as good as the Sonny Barger book, Hell's Angel if not better.
Very gritty and realistic and man, John Hall is a very good writer as well. He kept me reading and reading on.
