Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream

"Storming Heaven" is a riveting history of LSD and its influence on American culture. Jay Stevens uses the "curious molecule" known as LSD as a kind of tracer bullet, illuminating one of postwar America's most improbable shadow-histories. His prodigiously researched narrative moves from Aldous Huxley's earnes attempts to "open the doors of perception" to Timothy Leary's surreal experiments at Millbrook; from the CIA's purchase of millions of doses to the thousands of flower children who turned on and burned out in Haight-Ashbury. Along the way, this brilliant novelistic work of cultural history unties such figures as Allen Ginsberg, Cary Grant, G. Gordon Liddy, and Charles Manson. "Storming Heaven" irrefutable demonstrates LSD's pivotal role in the countercultural upheavals that shook America in the 1960s and changed the country forever.