In Reading the Grateful Dead: A Critical Survey, Nicholas G. Meriwether has assembled a collection of essays that examine the development of Grateful Dead studies. This volume includes work from three generations of scholars and includes a wide variety of perspectives on the band and its cultural significance. Organized into four sections, each describes an aspect or approach to Dead studies, along with an overview of the nature and extent of Dead studies: how it evolved and what it comprises today.;Studying the Dead. The education of a Deadhead : a letter from a novelist / Matthew Armstrong ; The Grateful Dead in the academy / Dennis McNally ; Thinking about the Dead : amateur anthropology, the human comedy, and making good ancestors / John Perry Barlow ; The thousand stories have come 'round to one' : studying the Grateful Dead phenomenon / Nicholas G. Meriwether ; Mapping the Deadhead social science trip / Natalie Dollar -- Music and lyrics, medium and message. How the Grateful Dead learned to Jam Michael Kaler ; 'Terrapin Station, ' postmodernism, and the infinite / Jon Ney ; A super-metacantric analysis of 'Playing in the Band' / Robert H. Trudeau ; 'And closed my eyes to see' : buddhist resonances in the lyrics of the Grateful Dead / Ryan Slesinger ; The Dead play Egypt, thirty years later : myth, memory, and marketing / Nicholas Meriwether -- The Deadhead experience. Crowned anarchy : songs, segues, and the golden road to unlimited devotion / Joseph Holt ; The Grateful Dead religious experience / David Bryan ; Shakedown Street : a Benjaminian approach to the Grateful Dead / James Revell Carr ; What are Deadheads? An informal survey / Alex Kolker ; Terrapin Station demographics and 'deadication' : the Furthur Festival '98 data / Rebecca G. Adams ; Autobiographical memories of Grateful Dead concerts : two descriptive approaches / Mark E. Mattson -- Society and history, contexts and currents. 'And I done some time' : Bobby Petersen and the Grateful Dead / Christian Crumlish ; Nomadic musical audiences : a historical precedent for the Grateful Dead / Jacob A. Cohen ; Deconstructing Deadheads / Mark Tursi ; The psychedelic experience, contemporary music, and the Grateful Dead : a 1969 study revisited / Stanley Krippner ; 'Bound to cover just a little more ground' : a Heideggerian reflection on the Grateful Dead / Stanley Spector ; Jerry Garcia and leadership styles in the Grateful Dead phenomenon / Barry Barnes -- Encore. Cold roses : a skeleton key to the Grateful Dead in the music of Ryan Adam / Matthew C. Armstrong ; Tapes and memories : a letter from a Latter-day fan / Jacob A. Cohen ; 'One last wish' / Jon Ney.