Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream - Softcover

Stevens, Jay

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0802135870 ISBN 13: 9780802135872

Publisher: Grove Press, 1998

Synopsis

For Aldous Huxley it was the next step in human evolution; for the CIA it was a potential tool for mind control; for Timothy Leary it was the liberator of humankind (a belief that led to his being branded “the most dangerous man in America”); for Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters it fueled the notorious Acid Tests; and it was the improbable common denominator that united such disparate figures as Allen Ginsberg, Cary Grant, G. Gordon Liddy, and Charles Manson.

In this brilliant, riveting, and exhaustively researched book, Jay Stevens relates the history of that “curious molecule,” LSD. He unearths a story of Pynchonesque complexity, tells it with novelistic flair, and irrefutably demonstrates LSD’s pivotal role in the cultural upheavals that shook America in the 1960s and changed the country forever.

About this title

From the Publisher

The definitive account of the quest for chemical transcendence. "The most compelling account yet of how . . . hallucinogenic, or 'psychedelic,' drugs became an explosive force in postwar American history."--Newsweek

From Library Journal

Stevens has written a gripping account of the use and abuse of mind-altering drugs in recent decades. He explains the fascination of mescaline and psilocybin for psychologists interested in behaviorial change. He documents the insidious role of the CIA in testing mind-control drugs. He traces the convoluted path of Timothy Leary from his position as research psychologist at Harvard to his role as guru advocating the use of LSD to achieve spiritual utopia. He descibes the outwardly placid social climate of the 1950s, and vividly contrasts the dramatic upheavals of the 60s, sketching pulsing portraits of Allen Ginsberg, Aldous Huxley, and Jack Kerouac. Packed with facts, this is social history at its most compelling. Carol R. Glatt, New Jersey Bioethics Commission, Trenton
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Grove Press
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0802135870
• ISBN 13: 9780802135872
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 416