Timothy Leary: The Most Dangerous Man in America

This program is part of our Good Lit series, underwritten by the Bernard Osher Foundation.

Bill Minutaglio and Steven Davis have written a madcap narrative about Timothy Leary, the High Priest of LSD, who ran a gleeful campaign for California governor against Ronald Reagan but was sentenced to a ten-year prison sentence for possessing two marijuana cigarettes. On the moonlit evening of September 12, 1970, six months into his sentence, the ex-Harvard professor was aided in his escape from prison by the radical Weather Underground. They aimed at sparking a revolution, and President Nixon believed it, obsessing about tracking down Leary, whom he branded "the most dangerous man in America." 

Based on new primary sources and firsthand interviews, this American thriller takes readers along for the gonzo ride of a lifetime, spanning twenty-eight months of President Nixon's global manhunt for Leary among homegrown radicals, European aristocrats, a Black Panther outpost in Algeria, an international arms dealer, hash-smuggling hippies from the Brotherhood of Eternal Love and secret agents on four continents.

MLF Organizer Name

George Hammond

Notes

MLF: Humanities

Minutaglio and Davis photo by Dennis Darling

**  THIS PODCAST CONTAINS EXPLICIT LANGUAGE  **