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The Grateful Dead Reader

Edited by David G. Dodd and Diana Spaulding

Publication date: 2000

Oxford University Press

Readers on American Musicians series

A collection of some of the best writing about the Dead. The articles and excerpts are taken from magazines, journals, books and newspapers and are arranged chronologically.

The contents of the book are as follows.

Introduction:

  • Gathering the Sparks - Steve Silberman
I. "Get Prepared, There's Gonna Be A Party Tonight!'': Carving Out A Territory, 1967-1974
  • Excerpt from The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test - Tom Wolfe
  • Excerpt from Morgan's Acid Test - William J. Craddock
  • Dead Like Live Thunder - Ralph J. Gleason
  • Jerry Garcia, the Guru - Ralph J. Gleason
  • The Day They Busted the Grateful Dead - Richard Brautigan
  • Primal Dead at the Fillmore East: February 1970 - Steve Silberman
  • Purple Lights: Grateful Dead Dance Marathon at the Manhattan Center - George W. S. Trow
  • Grateful Dead I Have Known - Ed McClanahan
  • Linear Notes to Europe 72 - Willy Legate
  • Full Circle with the Dead - Ralph J. Gleason
  • Now That We've Got a Moment to Stand... - Robert Hunter
  • Some Pretty Basic Tenets of Hypnocracy - Robert Hunter
  • State of the Changes: How the Dragon Urobouros (Giga Exponentia) Makes Us Go Round and Round - Alan Trist
  • Dead Heads Pay Their Dues - Robert Christgau
  • He Was a Friend of Mine - Robert Petersen
  • Robert Hunter, Dark Star - Robert Hunter
II. "If You Get Confused, Listen To The Music Play'': Back From The Hiatus, Into The Eighties, 1976-1986
  • St. Stephen Revisited and Beyond - Richard Meltzer
  • Still Grateful After All These Years: In Which the Grateful Dead, Pinup Uglies of the Haight-Ashbury, Become the House Band of the Age of Certain Doom - Charlie Haas
  • Dead Reckoning and Hamburger Metaphysics - Lee Abbott
  • Dead Heads: A Strange Tale of Love, Devotion and Surrender - Blair Jackson
  • Meditations on the Grateful Dead - Dennis McNally
  • An Aged Deadhead - Milton Mayer
  • Robert Hunter: Songs of Innocence, Songs of Experience - Mary Eisenhart
  • Jerry Garcia and the Call of the Weird - Alice Kahn
III. "We Will Survive'': A Top-Ten Hit And All That Follows, 1987-1994
  • The Swirl According to Carp: A Meditation on the Grateful Dead - Jack Britton
  • Transformative Mysteries: A Primer on the Grateful Dead for Aficionados, Initiates and the Wholly Uninformed - Steve Silberman
  • A Tale of Two Tribes: A Gay Man's Adventure in the World of Deadheads - Edward Guthmann
  • Reporting Live from Deadland - David Gans
  • Good Use - Al Alvarez
  • This Darkness Got to Give: Some Thoughts on Problems in the Dead Scene - Blair Jackson
  • You Don't Seem to Hear Me When I Call - Paddy Ladd
  • Introduction to We Want Phil! An Interview, and In Phil We Trust: A Conversation - Blair Jackson
  • Excerpt from The Millennium Shows - Philip E. Baruth
IV. "See Here How Everything Lead Up To This Day'': Jerry Garcia's Death And The End Of The Grateful Dead, 1995-1996
  • American Beauty: The Grateful Dead's Burly, Beatific Alchemist - Hal Espen
  • Obituary: Jerry Garcia, 1942-1995 - Mary Eisenhart
  • An Elegy for Jerry - Robert Hunter
  • American Beauty - Blair Jackson
  • The Grateful Dead: A Meditation on Music, Meaning, and Memory - Gary Burnett
  • The Only Song of God - Steve Silberman
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