In Southern Mexico an old man begins to experience vivid hallucinations. Fuck man, ? he said silently to himself, ?you did way the fuck too much acid.? Snapping in and out of reality is a sign of dementia. But he had, in fact, done way the fuck too much acid. Return with Malibu Bowman to his teenage years in the turbulence of the 1960s. Based on actual experiences. If you lived it, it will take you back. If you didn?t, it will show you what you missed. A drug fueled hitchhike journey into the decade that changed the world. This tale, requiring five volumes to tell, follows a boy born and raised in 1950s Jim Crow Houston who finds himself on the streets of Southern California to navigate his teenage years. From the Barrio Echo Park to segregated Glendale and back to a Houston unrecognizable, Volume 1 begins a remarkable piece of fiction based in the reality that was..... California Sixties.

The year is 1988. Naval Intelligence Service Vice Admiral Mark J. 'Malibu' Bowman is on the verge of putting a .45 caliber round in his own temple. In a single moment his Gulfstream III has been torn from the sky taking with it the two women who made his life what it is. He is stopped in his intention by the arrival of his replacement. He agrees to take on a mysterious, suicidal assignment in the desolation of Southern Arizona. Once there he becomes embroiled in a project leading to a plot hatched by the President himself to take over the world. Malibu's investigation into the conspiracy leads him to form an alliance with Vierte Reich, the Fourth Reich, with world domination plans of their own. A romantic alliance with a hard core attractive bar owner further complicates his mission. And this is just the beginning. He is joined by Dallas Raines, his former Executive Officer. After 9/11, the conspiracy goes to places that will kill millions. It is up to them to overcome the opposition and stop it.

To many vintage guitar fans, it seems inconceivable that Gibson dumped the Sunburst Les Paul in 1960 and, during the following year, introduced a completely new design, the one that we know now as the SG (“solid guitar”). At the time, however, it made good business sense. Sales of the Les Paul were faltering, and Gibson decided to blow a breath of fresh air through its solidbody electric guitar line. The company described the result as an “ultra-thin, hand-contoured, double-cutaway body.” The modernistic amalgam of bevels and points and angles was a radical departure, and this new book tells the story of all the SG models that followed: the Junior, Special, Standard, Custom, and more. There are interviews with and stories about Gibson personnel through the years, and all the major SG players, including Pete Townshend, Frank Zappa, Eric Clapton, Angus Young, George Harrison, Gary Rossington, Tony Iommi, and Derek Trucks. In the tradition of Tony Bacon's bestselling series of guitar books, The SG Guitar Book is three great volumes in one package: a collection of drool-worthy pictures of the coolest guitars; a gripping story from the earliest prototypes to the latest exploits; and a detailed collector's database of every production SG model ever made.

There is little in the public domain about this élite international high-IQ society, MENSA, which boasts a membership tested to have an IQ among the highest two per cent of the population. This book was written by an insider who, as a member of MENSA, contributed extensively to this high-IQ society over a span of almost thirty years. MENSA was originally conceived of as a third pillar intended to complement the Royal Society and the British Academy. When it was founded in Oxford during 1946 its original goal was to gather six hundred of the most intelligent people in Britain, as scientifically measured through an IQ test, who the government and its agencies could contact for advice on matters of government. It had two purposes: first, to conduct research in psychology and social science and, secondly, to provide contact between intelligent people everywhere in the world. The intention was for MENSA to conduct three strands of research: - To test intelligence tests, and identify correlations with intelligence. - Mensans as the subjects of research. - The Mensan as an instrument of research, i.e. where they themselves chose areas of interest to research and write reports on them. This book reveals some of the research conducted on or by Mensans over the intervening seventy years. Under its first president, Sir Cyril Burt, MENSA systematically conducted research on thousands of its members from 1946 until the death of the esteemed British psychologist in 1971. Burt’s research was challenged after his death, but it is debatable whether his detractors were fully aware of his MENSA research. MENSA was conducting big data research long before it became fashionable during the 21st century with the advent of powerful computers, and much of this research was made available to government departments at the time.

Itchycoo Park, 1964-1970--the second volume of Sixties British Pop, Outside In--explores how London songwriters, musicians, and production crews navigated the era's cultural upheavals by reimagining the pop-music envelope. Thompson explores how some British artists conjured up sophisticated hybrid forms by recombining elements of jazz, folk, blues, Indian ragas, and western classical music while others returned to the raw essentials. Encouraging these experiments, youth culture's economic power challenged the authority of their parents' generation. Based on extensive research, including vintage and original interviews, Thompson presents sixties British pop, not as lists of discrete people and events, but as an interwoven story.

"Documented with great care and affection, this book is filled with revelations about the intermingling of peoples, styles of music, business interests, night-life pleasures, and the strange ways lived experience shaped black music as America's music in California." —Charles Keil, co-author of Music Grooves