Acid Christ

The Sixties evoke strong emotions, and contemporaries rarely agree on what it’s all about. Author Mark Christensen was on the bus with Ken Kesey, one of the best-known characters of the decade, and he takes the reader for a ride with a literary genius who forsook a promising writing career (One Flew Over the Cookoo’s Nest) to become a flower-power icon. Kesey, the “king of counter-culture,” rewrote America’s self identity by rewriting his own. Combining extensive research with personal interviews, Christensen reveals this complex character with personal memoirs that converge with Kesey’s. This cultural road trip is both tragic and humorous as Christensen reveals a conflicted man whose traditional and conservative views clashed with his peace-loving idealism and advocacy of free love. After volunteering for a 1957, CIA-sponsored project, Kesey stole a stash of drugs, shared with friends and let it be known that LSD was “… a loaded gun impossible to aim.” Put this memoir next to The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test on your cultural history shelf.