Heads: A Biography of Psychedelic America

Heads: A Biography of Psychedelic America uncovers a hidden history of the biggest psychedelic distribution and belief system the world has ever known. Through a collection of fast-paced interlocking narratives, it animates the tale of an alternate America and its wide-eyed citizens: black market chemists, the LSD-slinging graffiti writers of Central Park, the Grateful Dead-loving AI scientists of Stanford, utopian Whole Earth homesteaders, government-wanted Anonymous hackers, rogue explorers, East Village bluegrass pickers, spiritual seekers, Internet pioneers, entrepreneurs, pranksters, pioneering DJs, and a nation of Deadheads.

Drawing on extensive new firsthand accounts from many never-before-interviewed subjects and a wealth of deep archival research, music writer and WFMU DJ Jesse Jarnow takes readers on a panoramic tour of a comic-book-colored American landscape. And with psychedelic research moving into the mainstream for the first time in decades, Heads also recounts the story of the quiet entheogenic revolution that for years has been brewing resiliently in the Dead's Technicolor shadow.

Featuring over four dozen images, Heads weaves one of the 20th and 21st centuries' most misunderstood subcultures into the fabric of the nation's history.

Jesse Jarnow is the author of Big Day Coming: Yo La Tengo and the Rise of Indie Rock and Wasn’t That a Time: The Weavers, the Blacklist, and the Battle for the Soul of America. His writing on music, technology, and culture has appeared in the New York Times, Pitchfork, Wired.com, Rolling Stone, Dupree’s Diamond News, and elsewhere. He is a contributing editor at Relix and hosts the weeklyThe Frow Showon independent Jersey City radio station WFMU. He lives in Brooklyn and tweets via @bourgwick. JesseJarnow.com