Don Lattin
Author THE HARVARD PSYCHEDELIC CLUB
Host: Basima Farhat
Previously Aired On: Tuesday, February 22, 2011 – Listen to the Show!
Don Lattin is a freelance journalist and the author of four books. His most recent work, THE HARVARD PSYCHEDELIC CLUB – How Timothy Leary, Andrew Weil, Ram Dass and Huston Smith Killed the Fifties and Ushered in a New Age for America, was a national bestseller in 2010. It’s the never-before-told story of how a young and jealous Andrew Weil got Tim Leary and Richard “Ram Dass” Alpert kicked out of Harvard in the early 1960s. They, along with religion scholar Huston Smith, go on to lay the foundations for the social and spiritual revolution of the sixties and seventies.
Lattin’s work has appeared in dozens of U.S. magazines and newspapers, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and the San Francisco Chronicle, where Don covered the religion beat for nearly two decades. He has also worked as a consultant and commentator for Dateline NBC; PrimeTime Live, Good Morning America and Nightline on ABC Television; Anderson Cooper 360 and American Morning on CNN; and Religion and Ethics Newsweekly on PBS.
Lattin’s other books are Jesus Freaks – A True Story of Murder and Madness on the Evangelical Edge (HarperOne 2007) and Following Our Bliss – How the Spiritual Ideals of the Sixties Shape Our Lives Today (HarperSanFrancisco 2003). He is the co-author (with Richard Cimino) of Shopping for Faith – American Religion in the New Millennium (Jossey Bass 1998)
Don has taught religion writing at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley, where he holds a degree in sociology. He served as Managing Editor of the God, Sex and Family project for the “News21” program at UC Berkeley. For more information, go to www.new21.org.
Lattin is also a contributing writer for the Encyclopedia of Love in World
Religions (ABC-CLIO, 2007) and the Encyclopedia of Religion in America (CQ Press, 2010).
ABOUT THE HARVARD PSYCHEDELIC CLUB
This book is the story of how three brilliant scholars and one ambitious freshman crossed paths in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the winter of 1960-61, and how their experiences in a psychedelic drug research project transformed their lives and much of American culture in the 1960s and 1970s.
They came together in a time of upheaval and experimentation, and they set the stage for the social, spiritual, sexual, and psychological revolution of the 1960s. Huston Smith would be the teacher, practicing every world religion and educating three generations of Americans to adopt a more tolerant, inclusive attitude toward other culture’s religions. Richard Alpert would be the seeker, traveling to India, returning to America as “Ram Dass” and reborn as a spiritual leader with his “Be Here Now” mantra, inspiring a restless army of spiritual pilgrims. Andrew Weil would be the healer, becoming the undisputed leader of alternative medicine, devoting his life to the holistic reformation of the American health care system. And Timothy Leary would play the rebellious trickster, the premier proponent of the therapeutic and spiritual benefits of LSD, advising a generation to “turn on, tune in, and drop out.”
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