Souvenirs of a Blown World - Sketches from the Sixties, Writings about America, 1966-1973 (Electronic book text)

"He is one of the best writers we have-to the point and always original."--"The New York Times Book Review"

The best-selling author of the Fletch series, Gregory Mcdonald presents both first-hand accounts of major events during the sixties and interviews with Joan Baez, Abbie Hoffman, Krishnamurti, Phil Ochs, Andy Warhol, and others. The year was 1966 and fresh off the heels of his controversial debut novel "Running Scared," Mcdonald was hired to write for "The Boston Globe" with the instruction to "Go and have fun and write about it, and if you end up cut and bleeding on the sidewalk, call the office." "Souvenirs of a Blown World" is an exuberant account of the people, encounters, and emotions that raced through the nation during those indelible years.

You will follow a war-battered young soldier through the steamy quagmire of Vietnam, attend a barbeque bash in Dallas for the opening of John Wayne's two hundred first picture, watch Jack Kerouac booze himself into hallucinatory eloquence, and run through the streets of Chicago during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Captured in kaleidoscopic prose, this is the vanished world of America's revolt, the explosive second adolescence that shook old institutions to their foundations . . . the time we must relive and understand if we are to understand and live through our own.

Twice the winner of the Edgar Allan Poe Award and described by critics as the inventor of the sunlight mystery and "The Master of the Pointed Story," Gregory Mcdonald has published twenty-six books, including the Fletch series. From 1966 to 1973, he worked for "The Boston Globe," where he was the first member of the major media to write against the Vietnam War.