The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test

Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test ushered in an era of New Journalism. "An American classic" (Newsweek) that defined a generation. "An astonishing book" (The New York Times Book Review) and an unflinching portrait of Ken Kesey, his Merry Pranksters, LSD, and the 1960s.

A wild, psychedelic, utterly Wolfe-ian romp through the rise of the counterculture movement of the 1960s. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is Tom Wolfe’s seminal portrait of Ken Kesey, one of the most magnetic figures of the counterculture movement of the 1960s, and his band of Merry Pranksters. Along the way, even as he vividly recounts the group’s infamous Acid Tests and the country’s changing attitudes toward psychedelic drugs, Wolfe ropes in a who’s who of the early years of the hippie movement, from the Hells Angels to the Grateful Dead to Allen Ginsberg. Wolfe’s clear, unblinking depiction of the travels, experiments, and exploits of his subjects have made his book the quintessential text in the New Journalism that he was instrumental in creating. Readers will find an unparalleled examination of this pivotal moment in American history. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is a prescient, evergreen classic, as groundbreaking now as it was when it first stormed onto the scene and forever changed what we thought nonfiction was capable of.

Amerika in den frühen Sechzigerjahren: LSD-Experimente, San Francisco, Blumenkinder. Und eine Busreise, wie es sie nie zuvor gegeben hat und nie mehr geben wird. 1968 beschrieb Tom Wolfe die Reise von Ken Kesey und seinen „Merry Pranksters“ in seinem legendären Klassiker. Ein Buch, welches längst als Neues Testament der Hipster-Mythologie gilt.

"When are the 1970s going to begin?" ran the joke during the Presidential campaign of 1976. With his own patented combination of serious journalism and dazzling comedy, Tom Wolfe met the question head-on in these rollicking essays in Mauve Gloves and Madmen, Clutter and Vine -- and even provided the 1970s with its name: "The Me Decade."

"An excellent book by a genius," said Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., of this now classic exploration of the 1960s from the founder of new journalism. "This is a book that will be a sharp pleasure to reread years from now, when it will bring back, like a falcon in the sky of memory, a whole world that is currently jetting and jazzing its way somewhere or other."--Newsweek In his first book, The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby (1965) Wolfe introduces us to the sixties, to extravagant new styles of life that had nothing to do with the "elite" culture of the past.

In the first biography of Ginsberg since his death in 1997 and the only one to cover the entire span of his life, Ginsberg's archivist Bill Morgan draws on his deep knowledge of Ginsberg's largely unpublished private journals to give readers an unparalleled and finely detailed portrait of one of America's most famous poets. Morgan sheds new light on some of the pivotal aspects of Ginsberg's life, including the poet's associations with other members of the Beat Generation, his complex relationship with his lifelong partner, Peter Orlovsky, his involvement with Tibetan Buddhism, and above all his genius for living.

Tom Wolfe's The Purple Decades brings together the author's own selections from his list of critically acclaimed publications, including the complete text of Mau-Mauing and the Flak Catchers, his account of the wild games the poverty program encouraged minority groups to play.

Si dice che chi ricorda gli anni Sessanta non li ha veramente vissuti. Tom Wolfe non solo li ha vissuti, ma li ha anche saputi raccontare con acume e immediatezza: in questo memorabile e ormai classico reportage pubblicato nel 1968, uno dei più riusciti esempi di "new journalism", lo scrittore ripercorre il "Magical Mystery Tour" di Ken Kesey attraverso gli Stati Uniti, dalla California a New York a bordo del "Furthur", un bizzarro autobus dipinto in colori sgargianti guidato nientemeno che da Neal Cassady, reduce dall'epopea Beat. Tra una manifestazione contro la guerra in Vietnam e un arresto per possesso di marijuana, Kesey, autore di Qualcuno volò sul nido del cuculo, e i suoi Merry Pranksters, un eterogeneo gruppo di artisti, sperimentavano le potenzialità creative delle droghe organizzando festini a base di Lsd noti come Acid Test. Ma soprattutto fomentavano la rivoluzione, trascinando l'America su una via pericolosamente allegra. Taccuino in mano, Tom Wolfe gentilmente declinava l'offerta di Lsd e annotava, raccontando al mondo la nascita della controcultura hippy, dell'arte psichedelica, e di tutto ciò che ha fatto degli anni Sessanta un momento di eccezionale ispirazione.