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.

Histories of the US sixties invariably focus on New York City, but Los Angeles was an epicenter of that decade's political and social earthquake. L.A. was a launchpad for Black Power-where Malcolm X and Angela Davis first came to prominence and the Watts uprising shook the nation-and home to the Chicano walkouts and Moratorium, as well as birthplace of 'Asian America' as a political identity, base of the antiwar movement, and of course, centre of California counterculture. Mike Davis and Jon Wiener provide the first comprehensive movement history of L.A. in the sixties, drawing on extensive archival research, scores of interviews with principal figures of the 1960s movements, and personal histories (both Davis and Wiener are native Los Angelenos). Following on from Davis's award-winning L.A. history, City of Quartz, Set the Night on Fire is a fascinating historical corrective, delivered in scintillating and fiercely elegant prose.

When Malibu's best friend Reno is tragically killed his girlfriend Bright Eyes and Malibu are overcome with grief. On the spur of the moment Bright Eyes decides to abandon California and go in search of an ex-boyfriend in Michigan. Her only means of getting there; hitchhiking. Without hesitation Malibu joins her on a twisting 3,000 mile odyssey in which they experience natural wonders, unexplainable events, unexpected hazards and perilous encounters in their brief moments in stranger's lives. Through this and because of it they develop a life long commitment. Malibu's return to Glendale alone leads him into even greater jeopardy, risks to his life and betrayal. Once there he finds himself walking a razor's edge between Kathy and the unexpectedly returned Debbie. He is first forced to choose between them and later not permitted to choose either over the other. While walking in this emotional mine field he also becomes ever deeper involved in the Rothschild crime Family. The results are surprising.

For Malibu and Kathy life changes overnight throwing them together into challenges just to live. Still faced with their denied passion for each other they find themselves forced together in an arrangement that is neither friends nor lovers but a combination of both. After living together for a year, first platonically and finally giving in to their consuming desire Kathy is at last free to become everything she and Malibu had dreamed of but now confused as to her feelings they begin to live apart. Twice Malibu asks her to marry him and she hesitates. The third time whether yes or no will be the last. Malibu in the meantime moves into a seedy hotel, works his drug business into the most lucrative in the Los Angeles area through a new partnership with a notorious mob lawyer and acquires a gorgeous harem that will stay with him for years. Then, he finds himself with his hand raised swearing to defend the Constitution. Ready to go to Vietnam, the assignment he is given instead leads him into the underworld.

Berkeley, California, was the bellwether of the political, social, and cultural upheaval that made the 1960s a unique period of American history--a time when the top-down methods of a conservative establishment collided head-on with the bottom-up, grass-roots ethos of the civil rights movement and an increasingly well-educated and individualistic middle class. W.J. Rorabaugh, who attended the graduate school of the University of California at Berkeley in the early 1970s, presents a lively and informative account of the events that overtook and changed forever what had once been a quiet, conservative white suburb. The rise of the Free Speech Movement, which gave a voice to disfranchised students; the growth and increasing militance of a black community struggling to end segregation; the emergence of radicalism and the anti-war movement; the blossoming of "hippie" culture, with its scorn for materialism and enthusiasm for experimentation with everything from sex and drugs to Eastern philosophies; the beginnings of modern-day feminism and environmentalism--and how all of these coalesced in the explosive conflict over People's Park--are traced in a meticulously researched and authoritative narrative. At issue was the question of power, and the struggle between the establishment and the powerless led to developments that the advocates of a freer society could scarcely have foreseen: Ronald Reagan, elected governor of California in reaction to the events at Berkeley, and Edwin H. Meese III, who battled against the student movement and People's Park, rose to national power in the 1980s (without, however, gaining any popularity in Berkeley, where Walter Mondale won 83 percent of the vote in 1984). An invaluable account of its time and place, this book anchors the '60s in American history, both before and since that colorful decade.

The Weathermen. The Symbionese Liberation Army. The FALN. The Black Liberation Army. The names seem quaint now, but there was a stretch of time in America when there was on average more than one significant terrorist act in the U.S. every week. The FBI combated these groups and others as nodes in a single revolutionary underground, dedicated to the violent overthrow of the American government. Thus began a decade-long battle between the FBI and these homegrown terrorists, compellingly and thrillingly documented in Days of Rage.

The extraordinary story of the artists who propelled themselves to international fame in 1960s Los Angeles Los Angeles, 1960: There was no modern art museum and there were few galleries, which is exactly what a number of daring young artists liked about it, among them Ed Ruscha, David Hockney, Robert Irwin, Bruce Nauman, Judy Chicago and John Baldessari. Freedom from an established way of seeing, making, and marketing art fueled their creativity, which in turn inspired the city. Today Los Angeles has four museums dedicated to contemporary art, around one hundred galleries, and thousands of artists. Here, at last, is the book that tells the saga of how the scene came into being, why a prevailing Los Angeles permissiveness, 1960s-style, spawned countless innovations, including Andy Warhol's first exhibition, Marcel Duchamp's first retrospective, Frank Gehry's mind-bending architecture, Rudi Gernreich's topless bathing suit, Dennis Hopper's Easy Rider, even the Beach Boys, the Byrds, the Doors, and other purveyors of a California style. In the 1960s, Los Angeles was the epicenter of cool.