Rating: 
Summary: Blown away.
Review: "We must remember to thank the CIA & the army for LSD," spoke John Lennon, "They invented LSD to control people & what it did was give us freedom." Or did it? The acid-tripping intersection between the CIA & the counterculture of the sixties is one of the areas where the on-the-record facts about "MK-ULTRA"(CIA program directed at gaining control over human behavior through covert use of chemical & biological materials)meld into the foggy region of conspiracy theory. It has been suggested,even by the authors of this great book,that with LSD the CIA found the ultimate weapon against the youth movement of the 60's. John Lennon was far from the only sixties acid-hero to make the connection between the mood of the streets & the secret CIA labs, A surprising number of counterculture veterans endorsed the notion that the CIA disseminated street acid en masse to deflate the political potency of the youth rebellion. By magnifying the impulse toward revolutionism out of context,acid sped up the process by which the Movement became unglued. The use of acid among young people in the U.S reached a peak in the late 1960s,shortly after the CIA initiated a series of covert operations designed to disrupt,discredit,& neutralize the New Left. Was this merely coincidence or did the Agency actually take steps to promote the illicit acid trade? The CIA's experiments with LSD are the most famous "MK-ULTRA" undertakings(the Agency also used hypnosis,electronic brain implants & microwave transmissions to experiment with)but did this top-secret operation also spin off a wave of history-altering assassinations? Did it whelp a brood of hypnoprogrammed killers? Sometime around 1973,right before CIA director & MK-ULTRA founder Richard Helms hung up his trenchcoat & stepped down from the CIA's top post, he ordered the majority of secret MK-ULTRA documents destroyed due to a "burgeoning paper problem" so there is no on-paper evidence that the program was the progenitor of either a conspiracy to unleash remote-controlled lethal human robots or to emasculate an entire generation by oversaturating it with a mind-frying drug. But those experiments were very real and the danger of a secret Govt. program to control the thoughts of its citizens,even just a few of them at a time,needs no elaboration. But hey,enough of my yackin'...enjoy the book.
Rating:
Summary: Absolutely excellent!
Review: ...this is a must-read for anyone with an interest in thesixties, LSD, political movements, gummint/military shenanigans, andall the rest. The rich story told -- actually there are severalintersecting threads -- is so unbelievably incredible you'll want toread the book at least twice. No one could invent such a surreal taleand write it up as well as these two authors have. This book shouldbe on every American's bookshelf!
Rating:
Summary: Hate to be redundant, but....
Review: adding to the rave reviews, this is a great, readable piece of research that illuminates a piece of history that the powers that be would rather leave in the shadows. Thanks to Lee and Shlain for some truly psychedelic revelations and delectable conspiracy theories. I highly recommend this book to anyone who rode the bus, is still on board or just wants to peer in the window as it passes by. It adds some sense to a time that often seems to have been a pleasant electric blur.
Rating:
Summary: An acid book? Yes, and a great history book as well..
Review: How do you go from marijuana and acid to the story of the American Left in the 60s? You don't really have to "go". Illegal drugs (a painful and tragic mistake of american and worldwide politics) are totally interwoven with the 60s. Naturally, you might say...
True, but what you might not be aware of is the CIA's involvement with acid as they experimented with the drug for military reasons ( making victims out of 100s of unwitting Americans, especially prisoners) and how acid "escaped" the lab and spilled onto the streets.
This book is definately NOT only the history of acid or another book that exposes the CIA's dirty tricks in recent times but what it is essentially is a great history book.
Stunningly researched (the bibliography alone is a treasure) and convincingly opined "Acid Dreams" is an accurate account of an era that has been a mystery to some and a landmark for others.
I have not read a more comprehensive book about the 60s than this one, one that helped me fill many voids i had about what exactly happened during that time and more importantly why it happened. Mind you, there are no myths in it either. Just hardcore reality even if in this case reality borders a mind space trip.
All the key "characters" parade through it. Government agents, acid gurus, left wing militants and leftist leaders and scapegoats, the Black Panthers, the Right wing establishment, the rest of the 3-letter agencies, the international "circuit", the whole lot. You go on a trip around the world, then one around your mind and then you'll be declared honorary citizen of the place called the "Score".
There couldn't possibly be enough i could say about this book to praise it, it's easily among the very best books I ever read with regard to the insights it offers on a topic that has been very much distorted by the corporate media and by the amateur historians used for that purpose. Wow.
Rating:
Summary: great read
Review: i am 14 years old. therefore i wasn't there in the 60s, and was actually only about 2 feet tall when this book was written, but i got it from the library to read on an overseas plane flight and i was blown away. from the disturbing CIA expirements to Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters to the 68 democratic convention, this book has it all. a good read whether you were there or not.
Rating: 
Summary: Extensively Researched, Worth a Read
Review: I found Acid Dreams quite by mistake, but it seemed interesting enough. And it is. Martin Lee, co-founder of FAIR magazine, presents his exhaustive research on LSD. Most interesting for me was the first half of the book, which deals extensively with US intelligence experimenting with LSD in various ways during the Cold War Era. Beyond that, this book follows acid through the psychedelic 60s, and into the 1980s. While Lee does a good job of tying in social information to add context, he does at times discuss things seemingly not related to the overall picture of LSD, and at others, goes into unnecessary detail on popular events such as Woodstock & Altamont, which we've all heard a million times. Still, it's a great book for anybody interested in drug culture, or who enjoys investigative/sociological reading.
Rating:
Summary: Extensively Researched, Worth a Read
Review: I found Acid Dreams quite by mistake, but it seemed interesting enough. And it is. Martin Lee, co-founder of FAIR magazine, presents his exhaustive research on LSD. Most interesting for me was the first half of the book, which deals extensively with US intelligence experimenting with LSD in various ways during the Cold War Era. Beyond that, this book follows acid through the psychedelic 60s, and into the 1980s. While Lee does a good job of tying in social information to add context, he does at times discuss things seemingly not related to the overall picture of LSD, and at others, goes into unnecessary detail on popular events such as Woodstock & Altamont, which we've all heard a million times. Still, it's a great book for anybody interested in drug culture, or who enjoys investigative/sociological reading.
Rating:
Summary: Whatever happened to Owsley?
Review: I read this book six or so years ago, and still remember it well. I was most amazed by the fact that once LSD got into the hands of the counterculture, it changed from a possible mind-control device to an instrument with just the opposite effect. Well written, and plenty of facts and great profiles of the major players in the story. And whatever happened to Owsley
Rating:
Summary: Lsd's impact on Culture
Review: If you are considering purchasing this book, be aware of a few things. First of all, this book is not just about LSD and the CIA. This book is about the origin of use of many hallucinatory and mind-altering chemicals, and the impact that these chemicals, namely LSD and to some extent Marijuana, had on the ensuing counter-cultures of the late 60's and early 70's. Connections between the CIA and LSD are mentioned early in the book and referred to occasionally after that. Although, there does seem to be an underlying message in the book that maybe LSD usage in the public wasn't exactly accidental. Overall this book is very well written and does an above average job of providing reliable sources of the information. On the other hand, their are many instances where the authors use this book to express their own political ideations and personal opinions. Nevertheless, for the most part the reader is provided with a fairly in depth view of how mind-altering chemicals played a significant role in much of what was going on during this time period, including music, the Vietnam War, the hippies, art, and the intrinsics of many aspects of the U.S. government, namely certain intelligence agencies.
Rating:
Summary: There was something special about the 60s...
Review: In 1969, the year of Woodstock, I was 16 years old. Acid Dreams actually takes us back, back, much further to the beginnings of the LSD phenomenon in America in the fifties, through the turbulent sixties, and beyond. I was completely mesmerized by energy and enthusiasm Lee injects into his prose. The history of the Baby Boom generation is not one to be dismissed lightly, as many try to do, especially those in positions of corporate power who would rather forget that "tune in, turn on, drop out," meant a diversion *away* from the great American past time...shopping, consumerism, and corporate profit! If you aren't old enough to remember these times, and if you didn't learn about them in school (and I'll just bet you didn't!) this book should be mandatory reading in every high school! Because it condones and encourages the use of drugs? NO! Because it encourages critical thinking, questioning authority, and looking long and hard at the "war against drugs," which is nothing more, and nothing less, than a war for the *control* of who is going to make the money off them. That's not what LSD was about when it got away from the Government...for it was the Government that first brought LSD to these shores in an effort to control people to begin with. It flew in their faces as they watched the younger generation make it their own flight to freedom. The psychotic breakdowns of bad trips were largely scare tactics designed to put control back in the hands of the "experts" who originally "tabbed" thousands of people in this country without their knowledge and/or consent, which, with LSD, *creates* the paranoia of the "bad trip." With LSD, awareness and environment and the people you are with mean everything in terms of how it affects your ability to perceive the possibilities within you. Yes, I took LSD back then. I treated it with respect and when I had the time and the support to know I was safe. After reading this book, I am sad that it took the political turns it did, for it had so much potential, particularly in the therapeutic setting, where many doctors and patients found it mutually beneficial. If you didn't know that, that's just one reason of many to read this book! While I wasn't part of the core of the "revolutionary movement" of the sixties, I was aware enough to know that we *had* something, something *important* that needed to be said and heard, and in a desperate grasp to get a handle on it, I found the sweet taste of it in Acid Dreams. I am pleasantly surprised, and thrilled to feel reassured that there is hope left in a world that is so rapidly becoming globally Corporate. Let us not go quietly into that good night!
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