A terrific overview of the Bay Area Vortex. The book starts with the trial of Owsley Stanley, who would quickly go on to introduce high-quality (and at the time legal!) LSD to the Bay area and help kick-start the Summer of Love. Covering the rise, decline and eventual collapse of the Haight-Ashbury hippie scene, this is a detailed history that is alive with little details. Plenty of black and white photos help you set the scene. The author actually lived in the neighborhood at the time which gives the book an insider's feel.

Instead of focusing on just the music or just the drugs, Charles Perry covers all sorts of different things including the great concert posters and the artists who created them, the book stores, junk stores and coffee shops, the various big personalities and groups and their philosophies, the Grateful Dead, the Airplane, bananadeine, Ken Kesey and his acid tests, the Diggers, Sgt. Peppers and on and on. The book treats the hippies in a pretty even-handed way, showing their good side and their bad without ever feeling like it is idolizing or ridiculing what was happening. All in all, this book serves as a terrific companion to The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, but it also stands very well on its’ own. ( )