Scoring tickets to a rock concert in the 1960s and '70s was like getting into an elite college: the odds were 5-1 against you and the admission process was controlled by music industry "suits." In their typical contrarian, fan-based style, the Grateful Dead changed the rules--capping prices for tickets to their shows and creating their own mail-order sales office. The odds of getting in didn't get much better (as many as 60,000 fans might vie for 12,000 tickets) so the main way to differentiate your order was the cover art on your envelope--the desperate Deadhead's equivalent of a creative college application essay.
In Dead Letters, Paul Grushkin gathers a strikingly colorful collection of the best of the 15,000 envelopes in the Dead Archives. It is not only a treasure of outsider art, but also an unusual history of the iconology and mythology of both the Grateful Dead and their loyal army of tie-dyed fans. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.