Morning in Marin: Zen, Drugs, and Ewoks on the California Coast

A revelatory cultural history, from Stewart Brand to Jerry Garcia.

Cross the Golden Gate and enter the rollicking bohemian world of midcentury Marin County, a fertile fount of risk-takers and radical thinkers. In these misted hills cultural currents swirl and swell, giving rise to the Marinassiance, an unbridled explosion of art and philosophy out of which Star Wars, Alan Watts, and the Grateful Dead all emerge, and where Janis Joplin hides. What made Marin such a galvanizing force of iconoclasm and counterculture: Was it the money, Mount Tamalpais, or the magic mushrooms? With a fresh voice steeped in local lore, David Perlis dips into parties at the No Name in Sausalito, hangs around the communes of Novato, and introduces us to the visionaries who sowed the seeds of an organic inner revolution that bloomed into a global commercial empire--transforming Marin along the way as outsider elements became the consummate insiders. Blending pop culture, biography, and a deeply affectionate sense of place into an immersive narrative history, Morning in Marin traces a movement of Zen thinkers, Beat poets, mystic feminists, and psychedelic rockers from their radical beginnings through their crises and contradictions. Forging an unbroken chain from Old Bohemians and Beats to New Age and New Hollywood, Perlis reveals how these people, places, and ideas combined to create a lasting American mythology.