The Last Great Dream
How Bohemians Became Hippies and Created the Sixties
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From the New York Times bestselling author of A Long Strange Trip and the publicist of the Grateful Dead, a riveting social history of everything that led up to the 1960s counterculture movement.
Few cities represent the countercultural movement of the 1960s more than San Francisco. By that decade, the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood was home to self-branded "freaks" (dubbed "hippies" by the media) who created the world's first psychedelic neighborhood--an alchemical chamber for social transformation. They rejected a large part of the traditional American identity, passing over American exceptionalism, consumerism, misogyny, and militarism in favor of creativity, mind-body connection, peace, and love of all things.
The Last Great Dream is a history of everything that led to the 1960s counterculture, when long-simmering resistance to American mainstream values birthed the hippie. It begins with the San Francisco Poetry Renaissance, peaks with the Human Be-in in Golden Gate Park, and ends with the Monterey Pop Festival that introduced Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin to the world. It tells of several micro-histories, including beat poetry, visual arts, underground publishing, electronic/contemporary compositional music, experimental theater, psychedelics, and more.
Fascinating and definitive, The Last Great Dream is the ultimate guide to a generation-defining countercultural movement--an Underground 101 course for newcomers and aficionados alike.
About this Author
Dennis McNally is an author, historian, and music publicist. His books include On Highway 61: Music, Race and the Evolution of Cultural Freedom, A Long Strange Trip: The Inside History of the Grateful Dead, and Desolate Angel: Jack Kerouac, The Beat Generation & America. He lives in San Francisco.
Reviews
"McNally masterfully combines many disparate lineages of political, social, art, and pop history into one singular, sweeping portrait. The result is a stunning vision of a broad and powerful idealism that gripped the world for more than two decades."--Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"In The Last Great Dream, Dennis McNally doesn't just chronicle a fabled parade of Beat poets, folkies, student activists, classical minimalists, jazz musicians, poster artists, the underground press, Swinging Londoners, and so much more. He connects all the dots in what amounts to a panoramic portrait of an alternative arts universe where freedom of expression always rang."--David Browne, author of "Talkin' Greenwich Village: The Heady Rise and Slow Fall of America's Bohemian Music Capital"
"Erudite yet engaging, Dennis McNally's marvelous ability to transform reams of info on the history of bohemia into elegant prose astounds me. This deep dive into the beats and the counterculture is an illuminating page-turner."--Holly George-Warren, author of "Janis: Her Life and Music"
"You hold in your hands a great mandala--a roadmap to a literary, artistic, and spiritual tradition that began with the intimate expressions of a few brave outsiders, until it reached a mass flowering that touched millions. Graham Nash sang, 'You who are on the road, must have a code that you can live by.' This is that code, told by one who has studied it, and lived it."--Raymond Foye, writer, curator, archivist, co-editor of "Collected Poems of Bob Kaufman"
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