Sweet Chaos: The Grateful Dead's American Adventure

I'd read every book out there about the Dead...or so I thought. Somehow this one passed me by, and I'm glad it did, because because maybe if I read it 8 years ago when it first came out I wouldn't have like it so much. I still listen to the Dead almost daily and sometimes I wonder why, what it is about what they did that I find so profound. Sure, it's about the music; but not totally. The Dead's music operates at so many more... Read Full Review

This book has gotten hammered because it has a lot of autobiography and a lot of political and sociological content. Listen to most people talk about the Dead, and it's autobiographical, it's about the experience and less about the music. I'm not faulting Brightman for writing about it in that context.Also, if you are a boomer deadhead, then marches on Washington or the draft as political happenings during the time you began... Read Full Review

Carol Brightman's taken on an incredibly ambitious task in writing about the Dead, the 60's, the drugs, the politics and the war, trying to weave it all together into an understandable story linked through the thread that was the Grateful Dead. She's done a terrific job here -- I couldn't put the book down until I finished reading it. Brightman writes with a good journalist's honest and critical eye, combined with a wise... Read Full Review

Having devoured almost every book I could get my hands on concerning the Grateful Dead, I must say that this one is in my top three favorites (the other two will remain nameless). Brightman writes clearly, with an insider's voice, but WITHOUT the sort of smugness that might accompany her privileged closeness to the band's members and scene. She manages to integrate the Dead into the political and social framework of the... Read Full Review

This is an amazing book. Not only is it fun to read, but it provides so much information about an era, that the reader is swept into its vortex and remains delightfully happy inside it. Spanning three decades that began in the early 1960s (although the late 1950s is also included), we see the Grateful Dead evolving. However, this is not a simple biography. It is a tapestry of a time, one that involves the drug culture,... Read Full Review