No Simple Highway: A Cultural History of the Grateful Dead
The Grateful Dead, along with a supportive community and plenty of psychoactive drugs, pioneered a new and ecstatic form of expression — the rock concert. They helped make San Francisco a center of the rock music world for a brief time and became one of counterculture’s most distinctive and durable institutions. To understand why, we will read histories and memoirs, listen to music samples, watch documentary films or clips, and discuss the band’s history with insiders. Understand the Dead’s achievement by placing it in the Bay Area’s unique social and political milieu.
Peter Richardson teaches in the humanities department at San Francisco State University. His history of Ramparts magazine, A Bomb in Every Issue, was an Editors’ Choice at the New York Times and a Top Book of 2009 at Mother Jones. His newest book, No Simple Highway: A Cultural History of the Grateful Dead, is forthcoming. In 2013, he received the National Entertainment Journalism Award for Online Criticism.
Guest speakers include:
- Nicholas Meriwether, Grateful Dead Archivist (UC Santa Cruz)
- Rosie McGee, author of Dancing with the Dead
- Blair Jackson, author of Garcia: An American Life
- David Gans, author and radio host, Dead to the World and Tales of the Golden Road