It’s the celebration of an era. At a mind-blowing price, this ultimate, beautiful, illuminating, and really groovy look at the 1960s counterculture is rich in illustrations and filled with the history, politics, sayings, and slogans that defined the age. For those who were there, this volume will flash them back. For those who weren’t, they’ll wish they had been.

Sex, drugs, and rock and roll; peace rallies and riots in the ghettos; Flower Power, Black Power, and Gay Power; Mothers of Invention and Women’s Liberation; Woodstock, Monterey Pop, and Altamont. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times: it all depends on whom you ask. But without a doubt the hippies transformed society. Every significant moment of the era comes vibrantly alive once again in psychedelic images, rare portraits of writers and musicians, dynamite poster and album artwork, and photographic records of political events that shook the world. Hundreds of unforgettable quotations come from seminal figures such as Ken Kesey, Timothy Leary, Grace Slick and George Harrison.

Proceeding year by year from 1965 to 1971, Hippie gives an unprecedented degree of shape and coherence to an age — that is kaleidoscopically astounding.

Barry Miles was a central figure in the counterculture milieu. He wrote Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now, as well as The Beatles: A Diary; contributed to I Want to Take You Higher, the Rock Music Hall of Fame’s chronicle of psychedelic music. The Sixties is Miles’ own memoir of the decade.