Don Lattin. The Harvard Psychedelic Club: How Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, Huston Smith, and Andrew Weil Killed the Fifties and Ushered in a New Age for America. New York: HarperCollins, 2010. 256 pp. $24.99 (cloth). ISBN 978-0-06-165593-7
✍ Scribed by Nancy D. Campbell
- Book ID
- 102340146
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 2010
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 107 KB
- Volume
- 46
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0022-5061
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
Readers interested in the history of hallucinogens would do better to turn to Erika Dyck's Psychedelic Psychiatry: LSD from Clinic to Campus (2008), which chronicles the reorientation of LSD from a psychotherapeutic tool and an object of legitimate clinical research to a "catalyst for a cultural revolution whereby a drug-crazed generation of North American youth would steer the world into a future of chaos and immorality" (Dyck, 2008, p. 115). While any social history of the construction of LSD as a threat to Western civilization and monotheism would have to take seriously the actions of the protagonists of Lattin's book, The Harvard Psychedelic Club is best read as a biographical chronicle of four men and their tense and complicated relationships with each other. The significance of their words and deeds for " Kill[ing] the Fifties and Ushering in a New Age for America" falls short of delivering the promised master narrative implied by the marketing and promotion of the book.
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