"Turn on. Tune in. Drop out." That seductive invitation from former Harvard psychology researcher and psychedelic drug evangelist Timothy Leary struck terror into the hearts of parents of American teenagers and young adults in the 1960s and 1970s. And it enraged President Richard M. Nixon, who saw Leary as a subversive force, capable of galvanizing opposition to his administration's controversial policies, chief among them its refusal to bring about a promised end to the Vietnam War. Based on extensive archival research and personal interviews, Bill Minutaglio and Steven L. Davis's The Most Dangerous Man in America is the entertaining story of the madcap 28-month globetrotting pursuit of Leary after his escape from a California minimum-security prison in September 1970.
Sentenced to a 10-year term for possession of two joints, Leary broke out with relative ease, aided by the revolutionaries known as the Weathermen. Its leaders included Bernardine Dohrn and William Ayers, the man whose radical past threatened the presidential prospects of Barack Obama in 2008. Relying on funds provided by another shadowy group, the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, Leary and his wife, Rosemary, eventually made their way to Algiers. There they entered the disturbing and often terrifying orbit of Eldridge Cleaver and the Black Panthers, recognized by Algerian authorities as the official representatives of the United States, actively plotting to overthrow the country they called "Babylon."
Minutaglio and Davis (Dallas 1963) vividly recount the manic goings-on in Algiers, as Leary's desire to spread the gospel of LSD clashed with Cleaver's plans for violent revolution. When the Learys eventually abandoned North Africa for Switzerland, and came under the dubious protection of international arms dealer Michel Hauchard, their lives became more surreal. One of the highlights of their sojourn--which, for Timothy, included time in both a luxurious lakeside chalet and prison--was his encounter with Albert Hofmann, the Swiss chemist who discovered LSD in 1943.
As The Most Dangerous Man in America carefully reveals, that title might better have been applied to Richard Nixon, who unleashed an illegal FBI spying operation called COINTELPRO against Leary, the Black Panthers and other political opponents. At the same time as these law enforcement officials single-mindedly pursued Leary, the Nixon re-election campaign was setting in motion plans that led to the Watergate scandal and Nixon's eventual resignation in August 1974.
Minutaglio and Davis's book is a vivid evocation of a raucous time in recent American history. Amid fierce opposition to the Vietnam War and the polarizing president who continued to prosecute it, the country faced a wave of domestic terrorism that included bombings of banks, draft boards and other government offices, whose scope may surprise even those who lived through that era. And in the eye of the cultural hurricane he helped set in motion stood Timothy Leary, colorfully portrayed in this fascinating story. --Harvey Freedenberg, attorney and freelance reviewer
Shelf Talker: Bill Minutaglio and Steven L. Davis offer a vivid account of psychologist and LSD guru Timothy Leary's bizarre international odyssey after his 1970 prison escape.