Central biographical elements in this book and then i go on and i talk about timothy and then a whole array of characters who through the decade of the 1960s. They were concerned about the greatest stain on the american body the republic to grow its continuance. They were also concerned about the mental issues and family relationships and personal dealings and sexuality and consciousness and rationality and there was a coalescing of forces, some demographic, some economic comes from literary and some culture and political in nature. That allowed for the culture of the 1960s to be as large in scale as they prove to be. There were several sparks or triggers for the counterculture of the 1960s. I think you have the backdrop of the cold war internationally speaking of domestically unfolding simultaneously i think you have got feeling and reality of alienation that i referred to earlier. I think that demographic matters came into play when you have these large pools of young people congregating together often on or near College University campuses. And then you have those terrible realities of racism in the war. And i think that enabled large number of people to be receptive to different possibilities. And then you have these key figures like ginsberg but then you also have the great bands of the era and great musicians. I think that people were drawn to the messages that were departed in the challenging of the probing of the provocative cast and sometimes of a radical nature contrasting the verities that were in place. They are enactin interacting wie another the way people behave. There is a very radical facet that i realized there are revolutionary possibilities. We think inherently in some of this which is why it is perceived to be as dangerous as it was considered by some of the powers that were, and it was treated accordingly. There are other avenues into the setting up of the underground syndicates of the papers cropped up. There is a new kind of comic that are in place. We think of gilbert and others as the underground newspaper in the 60s and i talk about that in the chapter on in Texas Capital city and it was this incredible compendium of how publication wise. You can go back and look at the issues and get these snapshots looks of so much was going on in the other movements of the entire period. A really interesting matter to reflect on and i grapple with this the best i can in the book is the impression of the universal scope and nature and the counterculture because we think of the counterculture and we think of Greenwich Village in new york city and we think of other pockets of la and so forth. But the reality is young people can come to congregate and you can find the planting of the counterculture which means virtually any College University had the possibilities inherent in the fact that there was a community of likeminded people that would be present so one of the focal points is in austin texas, the university of texas people what kind of question why that would be included, but austin and the university of texas were at the centers of their own fashion for the new left for the antiwar movement, the counterculture, the womens movement, so i used that as kind of a microcosmic examining process just as they focus on hate not surprisingly when you get into 1967. Earlier in scope, you can talk about the appearance of Columbia University in the small circle of friends that was referred to in back matter and their buddies who were challenging the institution that was columbia and the literary establishment. They were questioning him as they do in the famous as at that point. The delivery of how it was presented in 1955 the publication two years later served in a couple of those seminal moments and they serve as triggers. The appearance and the emergence of the project at harvard believe it or not which involved Timothy Leary and then eventually Richard Alpert brought in young people to serve as kind of guinea pigs as it were and proved to be enormously controversial. Surprisingly what became most controversial was the Oldest Institution that was harbored and they seem to be okay those Community Members and graduate students at where harvard drew the lines of harvard graduates. The journey across america in 1964 they went to meet new york city and it wasnt a happy experience. They shifted very far to the political right in that point in time and they went to meet the states other new york city and that was not a happy experience. Larry didnt even greet them even though they had gone 3,000 miles for the encounter to take place. Again, to get later into the 1960s, the mid60s and the latter portion altogether its almost like one event after another, theres the antiwar protest and in the area in general does the test of 66, 67, Golden Gate Park 1967, the summer of love in 1967, there is altamont, the unveiling of the family in 1969. Some spoke to the culture and some spoke to the darker side and you end up with peoples own frailties and weaknesses and drug usage brings about all the transmitted diseases that are ushered in and then the lost lives that are such a part of the story. We think of the success, but there are those that burned out along the way. With those famous musicians who died because of drug overuses almost in one fell swoop when jms and ginny and jim died, janis joplin and jimi hendrix, jim morrison in a matter of months and 71, but theres countless lesserknown figures who their education became stunted, the occupational possibilities became blunted, stillborn, and some of the people never recovered, their minds didnt recover and their psyche didnt recover and damaged relationships were not related. So theres lots of serious aspects to the counterculture and some as i said before seemingly more of this millennia possibility. Some of them seemingly reached the stars in a millennial manner that in some ways it was the apocalypse realities that help to dampen the hopes of how transformative this might have been. I talk about this at the mere close of the book. The computer revolution but weve experienced over the last few decades, the pc revolution in Silicon Valley and whatnot, a lot of that is connected to the Counter Culture and part of it is pertaining to who was drawn to those kinds of pursuits, and the attempt to reach a different kind of consciousness in different ways, and just as the u. S. Intelligence agencies and the u. S. Military helped to spawn the counterculture believe it or not, they have gone through drug tests that people put took and been helped to spread the gospel out. The military is heavily involved in proving the revolution of the 1970s and beyond, so theres this weird kind of symbiotic relationship between the counterculture and the u. S. Military and intelligence operatives, and im not saying that this is conspiratorial in nature. What im stating is the fact that there is a finding and thats one of the reasons the counterculture impact has been as enduring as it has been. Its often been viewed in a very caricatured manner. There have been cliches drawn about it. Thereve been stereotypes that have been passed around it. Its largely been dismissed and denigrated, and i think it needs to be received and perceived for the serious cultural and potentially Political Force that it was. My argument is that this was a radical unfolding with revolutionary possibilities. Did the revolution play out, certainly not. But in a manner that have been hoped for by those that participated in the counterculture i think that is honestly the case. But again, the impact nevertheless of the counterculture was huge and remains tonight on booktv on cspan2 in primetime, a look at some of the places we stopped on our cspan cities tour. One of the most alluring women to apparently ever walked