Biography & Autobiography

Tells the story of John Lilly's discoveries from his early experiments; mapping the brains of monkeys and communication with dolphins, to his experience with consciousness expanding drugs. The book includes an update on Lilly's work on human/dolphin communication and returning animals to the wild.

Busted for pot in 1965, Timothy Leary was sentenced to 25 years in prison. He escaped, and thus began an almost farcical odyssey: the former West Point student and Harvard professor was now an acid-tripping fugitive. In this delightfully irreverent account, Leary describes his time in Algeria; how he was sheltered by an arms dealer in Switzerland; his exploits with the Weathermen and Eldridge Cleaver, who tried to hold him hostage; and his eventual capture and return to the United States. The book includes black and white illustrations throughout.

Animal House on Acid is a memoir by Beverly A. Potter, a neighbor of the “most notorious housing unit on the face of the Earth.” Barrington Hall, a large student-run co-op on the south side of the University was Berkeley’s last outpost of the ‘60s. Barringtonians, as they called themselves, held fast to the culture of sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll long after it had ceased to be fashionable. Inside Barrington Hall, youth rebellion never grew old, because each year it was replenished with a new crop of 18-year-olds sorry to have missed the ‘60s. But Barrington became a victim of its own mythology: with a house culture dedicated to outrage, it eventually outraged all, even its natural allies.

Animal House on Acid is packed with stories: it's Potter's memoir of a truly long, strange trip, which she tells in a scrapbook-like format, composed of local newspaper stories, city reports, incident notes, posters, and photographs, all of it stitched together with Potter's retelling of wild tales — wild even by Berkeley standards.

For years, author Sheldon Norberg dealt drugs in the pot hills of Northern California. A scholarship-winning student, he dropped out of UCLA in favor of the overpowering lure of the Grateful Dead and counterculture living. Soon Norberg was making deals and doing drugs all the way from Humboldt to Berkeley. Confessions of a Dope Dealer provides an eye-opening, no-holds-barred account of Sheldon's life, but it also provides much more. It's a story of how one man's quest for transcendence blinded him to what he really needed: simple human acceptance. As Sheldon grows, he comes to see himself and his drug-addled life in new ways; this in turn allows him to analyze the cultural myths and values that surround drugs in America, producing a provocative memoir with a take on drugs like none other.