Impolite Interviews

Krassner's Impolite Interviews delivers 21 of the most compelling encounters you will ever witness, from a 1959 interview with author Alan Watts to Timothy Leary in 1995 just weeks before he died, from Norman Mailer talking about sex to Jerry Garcia recounting what it was like to play the Pyramids. Each interview gives a unique take on major issues: Communism, segregation, the Cold War, the sexual revolution, the drug culture, by major personalities. Impolite Interviews presents perspectives as diverse as George Lincoln Rockwell (then head of the American Nazi Party) and spiritual master Ram Dass. Krassner offers readers an illuminating look at some of the most important figures of the second half of this century through the eyes of one of this era's most innovative journalists.

The 21 interviews collected in this volume represent the best from Paul Krassner's trailblazing satirical magazine The Realist. These interviews profile towering figures in our postwar culture and counterculture, all of whom offer their unique take on the major issues of the time - moving through the headlines of another era (Communism, segregation, the sexual revolution) to the headlines of today (biotechnology, the ever-evolving counterculture, and the New World Order).

Paul Krassner is the only person to win awards from both *Playboy* (for satire) and the Feminist Party Media Workshop (for journalism), to be inducted into the Counterculture Hall of Fame at the Cannabis Cup in Amsterdam, to receive an ACLU Uppie (Upton Sinclair) Award for dedication to freedom of expression, and to be described by the FBI as "a raving, unconfined nut."