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Artistic representation of a man using psychedelics. The man's head appears like a matryoshka doll.

Brains on Drugs

Between the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, drug use to expand one’s consciousness went from an intellectual pastime to an emblem of social decay.
by John Semley via The Baffler on June 14, 2023

Activist Businesses: The New Left’s Surprising Critique of Postwar Consumer Culture

Activists established politically informed shops to offer alternatives to the consumer culture of chain stores, mass production, and multinational corporations.
by Joshua Clark Davis via Process: A Blog for American History on May 2, 2023
Illustration by Cristina Spano, picturing rulers and colorful shapes and designs coming out of the neck of a collared shirt

The Origins of Creativity

The concept was devised in postwar America, in response to the cultural and commercial demands of the era. Now we’re stuck with it.
by Louis Menand via The New Yorker on April 17, 2023
64 East 7th Street, New York City, 2022.

The Parsonage

An unprepossessing townhouse in the East Village has been central to a series of distinctive events in New York City history.
by David Hajdu via Places Journal on April 1, 2023
Malcolm Harris, left, and the cover of his book "Palo Alto," right. (Photo by Julia Burke)

The Obscene Invention of California Capitalism

A new history examines Silicon Valley, Palo Alto, the West Coast's settler ideology, and recent turbulence in the world of tech.
by Malcolm Harris, Emma Hager via The Nation on March 15, 2023
Cover of "Gravity's Rainbow," depicting a orange-red sky over a small city.

History Is Hard to Decode

On 50 years of Thomas Pynchon’s “Gravity’s Rainbow.”
by M. Keith Booker via Los Angeles Review of Books on February 28, 2023
A naked David Opal signaling a peace sign with his hands on a TV screen in front of a background of a 1970s themed living room.

What Became of the Oscar Streaker?

After Robert Opel dashed naked across the stage in 1974, he ran for President and settled into the gay leather scene.
by Michael Schulman via The New Yorker on January 30, 2023
Four women looking away from the camera and smiling.

Fairytale

The Pointer Sisters, the Great Migration, and the soul of country.
by Carina del Valle Schorske via Oxford American on December 13, 2022
Black and white photo of Woody Guthrie holding a guitar labeled "this machine kills fascists"

I've Got Those Old Talking-Blues Blues Again

The Folkies and WWII, Part Two.
by William Hogeland via Hogeland's Bad History on October 13, 2022
The Almanac Singers playing various instruments, including guitars, a banjo, and an accordion.

"Which Side Are You On, Boys..."

Watching the Ken Burns series on the U.S. and the Holocaust and thinking about American folk music.
by William Hogeland via Hogeland's Bad History on October 3, 2022
Front cover of Kevin Mattson's book, "We're Not Here to Entertain: Punk Rock, Ronald Reagan, and THE REAL CULTURE WAR of 1980s America."

Mapping Punk Rock in the Early 1980s

The nationwide spread of a counterculture.
by Glenn Dowdle via Northwestern University Knight Lab on August 15, 2022
Hitchhikers sitting on a road, thumbs extended.

That Ol’ Thumb: Hitchhiking

A review of "Driving With Strangers: What Hitchhiking Tells Us About Humanity."
by Mike Jay via London Review of Books on June 23, 2022
Crowd at Black Flag concert

The Unraveling of SST Records

Jim Ruland’s book on the legendary punk label helps explain why we lack a meaningful counterculture today.
by Michael Friedrich via The New Republic on May 3, 2022
Book cover of Whole Earth, featuring an image of Stewart Brand backlit and walking through a door, encircled by the earth.

On Floating Upstream

Markoff’s biography of Stewart Brand notes that Brand’s ability to recognize and cleave to power explains a great deal of his career.
by W. Patrick McCray via Los Angeles Review of Books on March 22, 2022
"What difference would another world make?", Sam Pulitzer, 2021.

New Left Review

Who did neoliberalism?
by Erik Baker via n+1 on March 8, 2022
Artists and people sitting on and around a hotel at Woodstock in 1967

The Dropout, a History: From Postwar Paranoia to a Summer of Love

The dropout was not just a hippy-trippy hedonist but a paranoid soul, who feared brainwashing and societal control.
by Charlie Williams via Aeon on December 3, 2021
A small cabin in the woods; Laird Sutton, a man with a thick white beard.

The Last Glimpses of California's Vanishing Hippie Utopias

A legion of idealists dropped out of society and went back to the land. Here's a glimpse of their otherworldly residences—and the end of the social experiment.
by David Jacob Kramer via GQ on September 9, 2021
Manhattan women's health rally
partner

Newsletters May Threaten the Mainstream Media, But They Also Build Communities

The platforms are new, but the form has been around for most of a century.
by Sarah M. Ovink via Made By History on July 8, 2021
Stephen Kinzer

The Untold Story of the CIA’s MK Ultra

In a biography of Dostoyevskian proportions, Sidney Gottlieb emerges as a tortured soul, penned in by personal compunction and a twisted sense of patriotism.
by Stephen Kinzer, James Penner, Ed Prideaux via Los Angeles Review of Books on May 19, 2021
Hendrix performing at Woodstock

Rewinding Jimi Hendrix’s National Anthem

His blazing rendition at Woodstock still echoes throughout the years, reminding us of what is worth fighting for in the American experiment.
by Paul Grimstad via The New Yorker on January 26, 2021
Political cartoon of three pigs with oil company logos
partner

The Campus Underground Press

The 1960s and 70s were a time of activism in the U.S., and therefore a fertile time for campus newspapers and the alternative press.
by Liza Featherstone via JSTOR Daily on January 6, 2021
Harriet the Spy.

Why Harriet the Spy Had to Lie

An elaborate secret life was a necessity for children’s author Louise Fitzhugh.
by Jennifer Wilson via The New Republic on December 8, 2020
Frank Zappa.

How Weird Was Frank Zappa?

Alex Winter’s new documentary about the musician fails to capture his deeply conventional streak.
by John Semley via The New Republic on November 26, 2020
A man in a t-shirt reading "Wanted: Jesus Christ"

The Protest Reformation

In the 1960s, youth counterculture spawned Christian rock.
by Johanna Fateman via Bookforum on November 11, 2020
The Dead Kennedys against a graffiti wall.

Punk Versus Reagan

A new book on American punk paints the movement as the last gasp of left-wing cultural resistance in the 1980s.
by Alexander Billet via Jacobin on November 9, 2020
circulatory system diagram

A Brief History of "The System"

Tracing the twisting path of a resistance slogan, from the Nazis to the hippies to Trump.
by Jackson Arn via 3 Quarks Daily on October 19, 2020
A sea of people at Woodstock.

The Book That Began as an Acid-Fueled Speech at Woodstock

When Pete Townshend whacked Abbie Hoffman offstage.
by Jack Hoffman, Daniel Simon via Literary Hub on February 18, 2020

Organic Farming's Political History

Despite its countercultural associations today, organic farming was entangled with fascist and quasi-fascist politics at its origins.
by Michelle Niemann via Edge Effects on January 23, 2020
People standing on the sidewalk and walking by Rick Allmen’s Café Bizarre on Third Street, November 11, 1959. Photo: Bettmann/Getty Images.

Wanna-Beats: In 1959, Café Bizarre Gave Straights an Entree Into Beatnik Culture

“At the remove of time, it’s really hard to tell the difference between beat and beatsploitation.”
by Ben Marks via Collectors Weekly on January 2, 2020
Joyce Johnson and Jack Kerouac, New York City, 1957.

‘You Got Eyes’: Jack Kerouac and Robert Frank’s Shared Vision

Joyce Johnson on the friendship between two famous outsiders.
by Joyce Johnson via New York Review of Books on October 25, 2019
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