United States History - Social Aspects, Social History - General & Miscellaneous, Substance Use & Abuse - Medical Aspects, Pharmacology, Subculture, Drugs & Controlled Substances - Social Aspects
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Overview
Storming Heaven is a riveting history of LSD and its influence on American culture. Jay Stevens uses the "curious molecule" known as LSD as a kind of tracer bullet, illuminating one of postwar America's most improbable shadow-histories. His prodigiously researched narrative moves from Aldous Huxley's earnes attempts to "open the doors of perception" to Timothy Leary's surreal experiments at Millbrook; from the CIA's purchase of millions of doses to the thousands of flower children who turned on and burned out in Haight-Ashbury. Along the way, this brilliant novelistic work of cultural history unties such figures as Allen Ginsberg, Cary Grant, G. Gordon Liddy, and Charles Manson. Storming Heaven irrefutable demonstrates LSD's pivotal role in the countercultural upheavals that shook America in the 1960s and changed the country forever.This is the story of LSD in which Harvard professors became holy men and a generation dropped out to seek spiritual bliss - only to find something darker.
Editorials
Commonweal
Jay Stevens proves himself a superb social historian with a ripping good story to tell. He tells it brilliantly.Newsweek
Fascinating....The most compelling account yet of how these hallucinogenic, or psychedelic, drugs became an explosive force in postwar American history.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, TrentonBook Details
Published
August 28, 1988
Publisher
HarperCollins Publishers
Pages
416
Format
Paperback
ISBN
9780060971724