Why read Smoking Typewriters?

Book cover of Smoking Typewriters: The Sixties Underground Press and the Rise of Alternative Media in America

Book description

How did the New Left uprising of the 1960s happen? What caused millions of young people--many of them affluent and college educated--to suddenly decide that American society needed to be completely overhauled?
In Smoking Typewriters, historian John McMillian shows that one answer to these questions can be found in the…

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American history

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Why read it?

1 author picked Smoking Typewriters as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Chris Elcock

Author

I love this book if only for McMillan’s hilarious chapter on the “Great Banana Hoax,” describing how the underground press convinced so many drug users to indulge in dried banana peel smoking to achieve what turned out to be a placebo high.

Much like Joshua Clark Davies’ From Head Shops to Whole Foods, this book is great at reminding us that the counter-culture was not just about self-indulgence but also about implementing new ways of living with tangible results. The underground press of the 1960s is a perfect example of stoners and radicals pooling their energy to disseminate information…

From Chris' list on The best books on the history of the American counter-culture.