On the Bus; The Complete Guide to the Legendary Trip of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters and the Birth of the Counterculture

The format is approximately 8.75 by 9.5 inches. xxvii, [1], 195, [1] pages. Illustrated cover. Illustrations (some in color). Front cover states 25th Anniversary "Electric Kool-Aid Acid Tests". Forewords by Hunter S. Thompson and Jerry Garcia. Paul Perry is the coauthor of several New York Times bestsellers, including Evidence of the Afterlife, Closer to the Light, Transformed by the Light, and Saved by the Light, the last of which was adapted into a television film of the same name. His books have been published in more than 30 languages around the world and cover a wide variety of subjects from near-death experiences to the biographies of authors Ken Kesey and Hunter S. Thompson. His writing and film making earned him a knighthood in the Royal Family of Portugal, where he is a Knight Commander in the Order of Saint Michael of the Wing and the official filmmaker of the Portuguese Royal House. In 1981, Perry went to China with author Ken Kesey to cover the First International Beijing Marathon for Running Magazine, for which he was an editor. Upon their return, Kesey and Perry began discussing the possibility of compiling a book of photographs from Kesey's famous bus trip across the United States, known as The Kool Aid Acid Trip. Kesey agreed to give Perry access to his photo archives. Perry joined forces with Ken Babbs, Kesey's sidekick, to produce On the Bus: The Complete Guide to the Legendary Bus Trip of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters and the Birth of the Counterculture. The book is a photo documentary of the Acid Trip that tells the story of the birth of the psychedelic era through interviews with Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary, members of the Grateful Dead, and others. From Publishers Weekly: In the effort to offer a "complete guide" to the legendary psychedelic bus trip taken by Kesey and 13 other "pranksters" in 1964, this book lacks only a bound-in tab of LSD-25 to make it the real thing. Candid and whacky photos taken during the trip convey a generation's abandonment to drug-induced ecstasy in a way that words cannot--although words there are aplenty here. Interviews with participants and witnesses, a hybrid essay/fantasy by prankster Babbs, excerpts from Tom Wolfe 's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test attempt to capture the unruly energies of a motley but winning crew. Of most interest to serious fans of those days are the interviews by Perry (former editor of Running magazine), in which, for example, the literary origins of Kesey's band in Palo Alto--Larry McMurtry, Robert Stone, Gordon Lish, Wallace Stegner at nearby Stanford--are restored to the myth. (Stone's refusal to aggrandize the "birth of counterculture"--"Still, we were rather pleased with ourselves. . . . We kept our world small"--is a nice counterbalance to the broader claims made elsewhere.) Perry's careful reconstruction of the nine-city trip has its wonders, too, such as the meeting with a surly, intoxicated Jack Kerouac who, upon seeing a "throne" prepared for him by the Pranksters with an American flag draped over it, "mute and quiet . . . took the flag and folded it up neatly and put it over the side." First U.S. Edition [Stated], First Printing [Stated].…