Sweet Chaos: The Grateful Dead's American Adventure

by Carol Brightman

Book Overview

National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author Carol Brightman brings the Grateful Dead and their history to life in this fascinating and "cogent, intelligent look at the Dead and the structure of American culture into which they so successfully tapped" (Publishers Weekly, starred review).

San Francisco's Grateful Dead brought its psychedelic blend of folk, bluegrass, and blues to the 1960s counterculture, along with a romance...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0671011170
• ISBN13: 9780671011178
• Release Date: September 1999
• Publisher: Gallery Books
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.1" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Glimpses of Heaven Amidst the Chaos

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 levels than simple sound than a collection of instruments and poetry. It emerged from a certain concoction of musical history, personality, drugs, group dynamics, and social context. Brightman looks at and analyzes that context and those forces better than anyone else. To me reading her book gave me a wider perspective, and even greater appreciation, for why I'm so moved when I listen to the Dead. It gave Definitely a book worth reading, whether you like the Dead's music or not, if you are interested in understanding how people explore the world we live in and somehow find ways to achieve moments of transcendence amidst all the chaos and suffering.

A better book than shown by reviews here

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 listening, or the Dead's playing on your college campus and your conscious effort to adopt hedonism instead of politics may be describing your trip. This book touches on your life and how the Dead fit into it. It's NOT a biography of dead members, either.It's for deadheads, for sure. Ones who had or have other interests outside the minutiae of each song in each performance. But if your only interest is classifying that really awesome bass line from Philly, or what the best Scarlet Begonias was in 1977, then look elsewhere, the Compediums or Wybenga's book. (I like the latter as well, for different reasons.) If you really want to know all the gory details behind the trip, then Scully or McNally are your guys.

An excellent, enthralling read

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 perspective on history and her own personal knowledge of the Dead through her sister's career with them.

Sweet Chaos: a fantastic book!

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 time from which they sprang by using both a personal and historical perspective and WITHOUT turning the book into either an autobiography or a dull historical exercise. A tough assignment, but she pulled it off. All in all, it's one of the best, most readable books about the Dead I've seen in awhile.

A book about an era.

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, the Vietnam war, the youth culture, the political landscape at home and abroad. The relationship between the CIA and the development of the drug culture is made very clear. To some it may be surprising. To all it will be enlightening. Although there have been allusions to this relationship elsewhere, never before has it been spelled out step-by-step from the CIA's own experiments to the ways in which LSD, for example, was introduced and tested among young people. Brightman brings to her subject a deep intelligence which is immediately noticeable. She also bring to it her own first hand knowledge of the period of which she writes. Having been deeply involved in the antiwar movement and a founder of the antiwar magazine, Viet-Report, she recalls events in both analytic and personal ways. The accretion of details builds a stunning portrait of the people in and around the Grateful Dead, one that is always illuminating, and one that will not be easily forgotten.