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Loading... Hippie (edition 2003)by Barry Miles
Work InformationHippie by Barry Miles
   No current Talk conversations about this book.  lauriebrown54 | Mar 18, 2021 |    ) Brightman | Jul 29, 2019 | Beat culture of the 50s to New Wave and Punk, he was there. The title is misleading in a way; while it’s about hippie culture, it is also about the Beats, Black Power activists, the start of Gay Pride, and musicians- lots and lots about the musicians; people I tend to think of as separate entities from the peace, love, pot, and granola hippies. Of course not all hippies were dropping out; many *were* activists; there is no hard line that says “This is a hippie and this is not”. But it’s more a history of the era in general than about the entire hippie movement. I found it very interesting; while I lived through the era I was just a little too young (and too much of a book nerd) to participate in much of it. This book illuminated things that I saw from the edge looking in. The book is visually very appealing; there are very few pages that don’t have images on them. Photos, album covers, and posters are all part of the imagery. It’s like a coffee table book, but with smaller dimensions. The book doesn’t beautify the hippie scene. He writes about both the good (peace demonstrations, the Diggers, wild fashion, hopes for a more egalitarian future, Woodstock, activism) and the bad (hard drugs like meth and heroin, the Hell’s Angels moving in on the scene, Altamont, Manson, Kent State). It’s a very even handed approach. Now, I think I need to go listen to some 60s music. ( )1  lauriebrown54 | Jul 23, 2016 | It goes from the simple to the outrageous; but, I would not call Mile's effort sensationalized. It just gives you the facts of what was going on at that time. Chapters are years and each is brimming with highlights of historical, political, social and cultural transformation. Narratives, illustrations and photographs vividly capture an age of change. I believe the author visits the whole cultural experience and provides an interesting look at that moment in time. ------ "It was the best of times.... It was the worst of times.... It very much depends on whom you ask" (  )1 pennsylady | Jan 14, 2015 | oldhippy | Feb 4, 2014 |
 To turn the shiny pages of "Hippie" is to breathe deeply. My copy fell open at a manifesto by Frank Zappa, in which he admitted that "A freak is not a freak if ALL are freaks," and went on to assert that "Looking and acting eccentric IS NOT ENOUGH." How true. And yet, what a long time it took to find that out. Here they all are: Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Brian Jones -- this book includes a good deal of the British scene -- Bob Dylan and Timothy Leary. (The latter, the last time I saw him in the early 90's, was planning to have himself cryogenically frozen but was "not to be reanimated during a Republican administration.") Occasionally, there is a picture that jars. What exactly is Martin Luther King Jr. doing in a book with a title like this? He is standing on a road outside Selma under a billowing Stars and Stripes. He's wearing a suit and tie. He's not even trying to look or act eccentric, let alone freakish. The marketing of the 60's has come to necessitate the blending of quite discrepant images: the dogs of Selma and the bearded Puritans of the Cuban revolution, along with the moon-faced narcissists and dropouts of Haight-Ashbury and the groupie-draped avatars of rock. (Francis Ford Coppola later managed this subliminal association even better, synthesizing the music of The Doors with the near-psychedelic bloom of napalm in the verdant foliage.) This would be another way of saying that the days of love and peace had their sordid and nasty side, too.
An illustrated celebration of the 1960s counterculture captures the political fervor, historical events, slogans, sayings, fashions, styles, music, artwork, and other characteristics and personalities that defined the era from 1965 to 1971. No library descriptions found. |
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 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)305.568Social sciences Social Sciences; Sociology and anthropology Groups of people Class Lower, alienated, excluded classesLC ClassificationRatingAverage: (3.95)
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Wikipedia in English (3)
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I really enjoyed this book; while I’ve read a good deal about the era, Miles really brought it to life. Pretty much every page has an illustration on it: photos, posters, ads. The main subjects are music and concerts, drugs, and protest movements. While “Hippie” is the title, the author also covers the Beats, the Black Power movement, Gay Pride, the Mods, and more. It’s all part of the era.
I lived through the era, but I was a child and my exposure was limited to TV, radio, and magazines. This book made me wish I had been just a little older. I would have loved to have gone to a Be-In, a Dead or Joplin concert, seen the Merry Pranksters with their bus. This book isn’t just the pretty stuff, though. He exposes the meth and heroin use, the Hell’s Angels becoming an unwelcome force at concerts, the ODs and the VD, and all the ugly parts. Five stars. (