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

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 by Lattin, Don. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9780061655937.

“I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy just about every page . . . This groovy story unfurls ― chronicling the lives of men who were brilliant but damaged, soulful but vengeful, zonked-out but optimistic and wry ― like a ready-made treatment for a sprawling comic movie.” ― The New York Times Four Harvard men took a psychedelic trip in the early 1960s, and America has never been the same. In the winter of 1960–61, three brilliant scholars and one ambitious undergraduate crossed paths at Harvard University. What followed was a groundbreaking psychedelic research project, a campus scandal, and a cultural revolution. Journalist Don Lattin tells the true story of Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert (later Ram Dass), religion scholar Huston Smith, and Andrew Weil. The book goes inside: The first experiments with psilocybin mushrooms and LSD, from the Concord Prison Project to the famous Good Friday Experiment in Marsh Chapel The jealousy, rivalry, and betrayal that got Leary and Alpert expelled from Harvard in 1963, and the psychedelic scene that followed, with appearances by Allen Ginsberg, Aldous Huxley, Ken Kesey, and John Lennon Alperts journey to India and return as Ram Dass, Learys prison escape and exile, and Weils rise as Americas leading voice in holistic health and integrative medicine How meditation, yoga, Eastern religion, natural foods, and the New Age movement entered the American mainstream This fast-paced group biography earned a starred review from Publishers Weekly. It is essential reading for anyone curious about the history of psychedelics, the counterculture of the sixties, and the origins of modern spirituality. Today, psychedelic therapy and research on psilocybin and MDMA are making headlines again. Lattin shows where the movement began, what went right and wrong, and why these four men still shape the way we think about mind, body, and spirit. Readers of Michael Pollans How to Change Your Mind and Tom Wolfes The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test will be captivated by this wild, revealing, and unforgettable story of four seekers who helped end the fifties and launch a new age for America.