The Harvard Psychedelic Club

By Don Lattin,

Book cover of The Harvard Psychedelic Club: How Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, Huston Smith, and Andrew Weil Killed the Fifties and Ushered in a New Age for America

Book description

This book is the story of how three brilliant scholars and one ambitious freshman crossed paths in the early sixties at a Harvard-sponsored psychedelic-drug research project, transforming their lives and American culture and launching the mind/body/spirit movement that inspired the explosion of yoga classes, organic produce, and alternative medicine. The…

When you buy books, we may earn a commission that helps keep our lights on (or join the rebellion as a member).

Why read it?

1 author picked The Harvard Psychedelic Club as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Growing up in small-town America, I learned that psychedelics were evil poisons that would rot your brain and seduce you into addiction. As I grew older I learned about the opposition to the establishment’s War on Drugs—the punks, hippies, stoners, and other countercultural miscreants who downed ecstasy tablets like candy and flew their freak flags high.

What I did not know, and what shocked me when reading The Harvard Psychedelic Club, was that these opposing factions had once been united. In the 1960s, people were hopeful about the potential of LSD and other substances, and researchers were conducting promising research…

If you love The Harvard Psychedelic Club...

Ad

Book cover of Tap Dancing on Everest: A Young Doctor's Unlikely Adventure

Tap Dancing on Everest By Mimi Zieman,

Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.

The team attempts a new route up…

Want books like The Harvard Psychedelic Club?

Our community of 12,000+ authors has personally recommended 78 books like The Harvard Psychedelic Club.

Browse books like The Harvard Psychedelic Club

Book cover of The Joyous Cosmology: Adventures in the Chemistry of Consciousness
Book cover of Tripping: An Anthology of True-Life Psychedelic Adventures
Book cover of The Museum Dose: 12 Experiments in Pharmacologically Mediated Aesthetics

Share your top 3 reads of 2024!

And get a beautiful page showing off your 3 favorite reads.

1,593

readers submitted
so far, will you?

Ad

📚 If you like The Harvard Psychedelic Club, you might also like...

Book cover of We Had Fun and Nobody Died: Adventures of a Milwaukee Music Promoter

We Had Fun and Nobody Died By Amy T. Waldman, Peter Jest,

This irreverent biography provides a rare window into the music industry from a promoter’s perspective. From a young age, Peter Jest was determined to make a career in live music, and despite naysayers and obstacles, he did just that, bringing national acts to his college campus atUW-Milwaukee, booking thousands of…

Book cover of Grand Old Unraveling: The Republican Party, Donald Trump, and the Rise of Authoritarianism

Grand Old Unraveling By John Kenneth White,

It didn’t begin with Donald Trump. When the Republican Party lost five straight presidential elections during the 1930s and 1940s, three things happened: (1) Republicans came to believe that presidential elections are rigged; (2) Conspiracy theories arose and were believed; and (3) The presidency was elevated to cult-like status.

Long…

5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in psychedelics, alternative medicine, and new age?

Psychedelics 23 books
New Age 25 books