Hippie - Hardcover

Miles, Barry

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1402714424 ISBN 13: 9781402714429

Publisher: Union Square & Co., 2004

Synopsis

It’s the celebration of an era. At a mind-blowing price, this ultimate, beautiful, illuminating, and really groovy look at the 1960s counterculture is rich in illustrations and filled with the history, politics, sayings, and slogans that defined the age. For those who were there, this volume will flash them back. For those who weren’t, they’ll wish they had been.

Sex, drugs, and rock and roll; peace rallies and riots in the ghettos; Flower Power, Black Power, and Gay Power; Mothers of Invention and Women’s Liberation; Woodstock, Monterey Pop, and Altamont. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times: it all depends on whom you ask. But without a doubt the hippies transformed society. Every significant moment of the era comes vibrantly alive once again in psychedelic images, rare portraits of writers and musicians, dynamite poster and album artwork, and photographic records of political events that shook the world. Hundreds of unforgettable quotations come from seminal figures such as Ken Kesey, Timothy Leary, Grace Slick and George Harrison. Proceeding year by year from 1965 to 1971, Hippie gives an unprecedented degree of shape and coherence to an age—that is kaleidoscopically astounding.

Barry Miles was a central figure in the counterculture milieu. He wrote Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now, as well as The Beatles: A Diary; contributed to I Want to Take You Higher, the Rock Music Hall of Fame’s chronicle of psychedelic music. The Sixties is Miles’ own memoir of the decade.

About this title

About the Author

Barry Miles is a respected chronicler of the Beat generation and 1960s culture. His autobiography in The Sixties was published in October 2002. He has written biographies of, among others, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs. He also recently wrote Paul MacCartney's Blackbird and the UK section of Let Me Take You Higher for Chronicle (in association with the Rock Music Hall of Fame). He worked for The Beatles Apple organisation in the late 1960s and was the founder of the international Times.

From Booklist

The watershed 1960s can be gloriously re-experienced in the pages of this magnificent, oversize volume. The swinging '60s will live forever for the boomers who came of age in that decade; for their parents, who, at the time, felt uncomfortable with the abrupt shifts they observed in values and attitudes (to say nothing of dress); and now for their children, who listen to the rock music of that era and wonder, Was it really all that cool? Miles uses the hippie as a metaphor for the whole cultural experience of the 1960s and its impact on American--no, world--political and social life. As is so graphically documented here, the hippie was the epitome of the youth culture and very much defined the times. This was the great era of protest; hippies stood outside society, and, from that vantage point, they offered both valid and off-the-wall criticism. This luscious book, its textual accompaniment as spirited as its bounty of dynamic illustrations (including candid photos, album covers, and publicity shots), establishes the wide social boundaries of the movement--from antiwar activities to fashion and music and cinema--and spotlights the individuals most important to the counterculture, from Bob Dylan to Jim Morrison, from Ken Kesey to Abbie Hoffman. And, of course, the new-arrivals-display potential of this book in the public library is rich and varied. Wayne Koestenbaum's biography Andy Warhol (2001) could be set beside it as collateral reading, as could Bruce Spizer's The Beatles Are Coming! (2004) and the Autobiography of Martin Luther King (1998), a collection of King's writings. Also, don't forget to use books and even actual artifacts pertaining to gay liberation, fashions of the time, cinema, and all other aspects of distinctive '60s culture. Brad Hooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Union Square & Co.
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 1402714424
• ISBN 13: 9781402714429
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 384