The greatest wave of communal living in American history crested in the tumultuous 1960s era including the early 1970s. To the fascination and amusement of more decorous citizens, hundreds of thousands of mostly young dreamers set out to build a new culture apart from the established society. Widely believed by the larger public to be sinks of drug-ridden sexual immorality, the communes both intrigued and repelled the American people. The intentional communities of the 1960s era were far more diverse than the stereotype of the hippie commune would suggest. A great many of them were religious in basis, stressing spiritual seeking and disciplined lifestyles. Others were founded on secular visions of a better society. Hundreds of them became so stable that they survive today. This book surveys the broad sweep of this great social yearning from the first portents of a new type of communitarianism in the early 1960s through the waning of the movement in the mid-1970s. Based on more than five hundred interviews conducted for the 60s Communes Project, among other sources, it preserves a colorful and vigorous episode in American history. The book includes an extensive directory of active and non-active communes, complete with dates of origin and dissolution.

In this sympathetic history of a maligned decade, Marty Jezer, a fellow antiwar activist, details Abbie Hoffman's humor, manic energy, depressive spells, political skills, & above all, his incurable & still contagious optimism. He presents a thoughtful, solidly researched biography of the wildly creative & iconoclastic Yippie, portraying Hoffman as a fresh force in American political culture. Jezer surveys in detail the politics, philosophies, & struggles of the antiwar movement. 'A solid account of the life of an inventive, destructive luftmensch, & a valuable cautionary tale for both the left & right.'

Lasqueti Island has a rowdy and divided reputation. Between the 1970s and early ?80s, the island attracted a flood of counter-culture seekers - communards, hippies, utopians, revolutionaries and other exotic characters looking for an alternative lifestyle. Today many perceive it as a romantic fantasy: an existence of bucolic peace, surrounded by isolation and wild nature, a great place to bring up children and a grand place to grow old. Yet many others would disagree, believing these islanders to be "inbred hermits," unfettered by social niceties or the rule of the law. Many consider them troglodytes who hide out from authorities, grow or brew drugs and vandalize what they can for pure amusement. Regardless of its reputation, Lasqueti Island is one of the least populated and least known of Canada's Gulf Islands. ACCIDENTAL EDEN explores both its eccentric days and its political accomplishments. The Islanders' efforts to convince BC Hydro to re-route the Cheekeye-Dunsmuir powerline around, rather than over, the island was an outstanding accomplishment, changing the way BC Hydro managed its power delivery into rural areas. These stories are a unique collection of unusual tales, hippy communes, curious characters and, whether perceived as good or bad, an irreplaceable era in British Columbia's history.

An exploration of the personal and spiritual truths revealed through LSD • Reveals that LSD visions weave an ongoing story from trip to trip • Shows that trips progress through three stages: personal issues and pre-birth consciousness, ego-loss, and on to the sacred • Explores psychedelic use throughout history, including the mass hallucinations common in the Middle Ages and the early therapeutic use of LSD Toward the end of his fifties, Christopher Gray took, for the first time in years, a 100-microgram acid trip. So extraordinary, and to his surprise so enjoyable, were the effects that he began to take the same dose in the same way--quietly and on his own--once every two to three weeks. In The Acid Diaries, Gray details his experimentation with LSD over a period of three years and shares the startling realization that his visions were weaving an ongoing story from trip to trip, revealing an underlying reality of personal and spiritual truths. Following the theories of Stanislav Grof and offering quotes from others’ experiences that parallel his own--including those of Aldous Huxley, Albert Hofmann, and Gordon Wasson--he shows that trips progress through three stages: the first dealing with personal issues and pre-birth consciousness; the second with ego-loss, often with supernatural overtones; and the third with sacred, spiritual, and even apocalyptic themes. Pairing his experiences with an exploration of psychedelic use throughout history, including the ergot-spawned mass hallucinations that were common through the Middle Ages and the early use of LSD for therapeutic purposes, Gray offers readers a greater understanding and appreciation for the potential value of LSD not merely for transpersonal growth but also for spiritual development.

More people are using acid today than at any time since the 1960s. This book summarizes everything that is known about this potent psychedelic drug: what an acid trip is like, how LSD was discovered, what forms are currently available on the underground market, how to produce the drug, and much more -- including, of course, caveats about acid and the law.

Whether it is hailed as a staircase to heaven or condemned as a mall of the weird, the Burning Man Festival has been a source of discussion and debate since its inception in 1986. Set as an anti-commercialism alternative temporary community, the festival has attracted up to 30,000 seekers of cultural, artistic and spiritual enlightenment, and these nine critical reviews offer up some of the reasons they faithfully attend. The essays describe the cults that have formed around the Burning Man Festival, the factors of ritual, pilgrimage and transformation that attract them, the festival as an ethnographic experience of the self, the business end of a cultural experience, volunteerism, art cars, utopias and social sculpture, the surreal, and community memory. Of course there are photographs of the festival and its participants, along with visuals of the alternate realities offered. Annotation ©2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

They have names like Barmy Bernie, Daft Donald, and Steamin' Sammy. They like lager (in huge quantities), the Queen, football clubs (especially Manchester United), and themselves. Their dislike encompasses the rest of the known universe, and England's soccer thugs express it in ways that range from mere vandalism to riots that terrorize entire cities. Now Bill Buford, editor of the prestigious journal Granta, enters this alternate society and records both its savageries and its sinister allure with the social imagination of a George Orwell and the raw personal engagement of a Hunter Thompson.

Cited by the L.A. Weekly as "the culture's foremost spokesman for the psychedelic experience," Terrence McKenna is an underground legend as a brilliant raconteur, adventurer, and expert on the experiential use of mind-altering plants. In these essays, interviews, and narrative adventures, McKenna takes us on a mesmerizing journey deep into the Amazon as well as into the hidden recesses of the human psyche and the outer limits of our culture, giving us startling visions of the past and future.

A mind-expanding dive into a lost chapter of 1968, featuring the famous and forgotten: Van Morrison, folkie-turned-cult-leader Mel Lyman, Timothy Leary, James Brown, and many more Van Morrison's Astral Weeks is an iconic rock album shrouded in legend, a masterpiece that has touched generations of listeners and influenced everyone from Bruce Springsteen to Martin Scorsese. In his first book, acclaimed musician and journalist Ryan H. Walsh unearths the album's fascinating backstory--along with the untold secrets of the time and place that birthed it: Boston 1968. On the 50th anniversary of that tumultuous year, Walsh's book follows a criss-crossing cast of musicians and visionaries, artists and hippie entrepreneurs, from a young Tufts English professor who walks into a job as a host for TV's wildest show (one episode required two sets, each tuned to a different channel) to the mystically inclined owner of radio station WBCN, who believed he was the reincarnation of a scientist from Atlantis. Most penetratingly powerful of all is Mel Lyman, the folk-music star who decided he was God, then controlled the lives of his many followers via acid, astrology, and an underground newspaper called Avatar. A mesmerizing group of boldface names pops to life in Astral Weeks: James Brown quells tensions the night after Martin Luther King, Jr. is assassinated; the real-life crimes of the Boston Strangler come to the movie screen via Tony Curtis; Howard Zinn testifies for Avatar in the courtroom. From life-changing concerts and chilling crimes, to acid experiments and film shoots, Astral Weeks is the secret, wild history of a unique time and place. One of LitHub's 15 Books You Should Read This March