BookShared
  • MEMBER AREA    
  • Agents of Chaos: Thomas King Forçade, High Times, and the Paranoid End of the 1970s

    (By Sean Howe)

    Book Cover Watermark PDF Icon Read Ebook
    ×
    Size 25 MB (25,084 KB)
    Format PDF
    Downloaded 640 times
    Last checked 12 Hour ago!
    Author Sean Howe
    “Book Descriptions: The life and times of High Times’ enigmatic founder Thomas King Forcade, an underground newspaper editor and marijuana kingpin who battled both the U.S. government and fellow radicals, in a whirlwind narrative of bloody brawls, car chases, police raids, and smuggling runs—assembled from exclusive interviews, archived private correspondences, and declassified documents.
     
    At the end of the 1960s, the mysterious Tom Forcade suddenly appeared on the scene, insinuated himself into the top echelons of the political counterculture, and took over operations of the Underground Press Syndicate, a coalition of newspapers across the country. Even as he weathered government surveillance and harassment, he embarked on a landmark court battle to obtain White House press credentials. But his outrageous stunts—like pieing Congressional panelists, stealing presidential portraits, and picking fights with other activists—led to charges that he was an agent provocateur. He claimed that he was just trying to “advance international surrealism.” 
     
    As the movements of that decade faded, Forcade saw a new path forward—marijuana, he believed, could be used as a tool for cultural and economic revolution. The goal was simple: what Playboy had done for sex, High Times would do for marijuana, dragging a taboo subject into the mainstream. Bankrolled by drug-dealing profits, the magazine was a travelogue of globe-trotting adventure and a wellspring of news about "the business" from a worldwide network of sources. With regular updates on legislation, advice for would-be entrepreneurs and charts of price fluctuations, the glossy magazine used a distinctly cosmopolitan sensibility that simultaneously legitimized and commodified drug culture. Its editorials—which warned against corporate interests descending upon legalized weed and international drug wars serving as cover for imperialist adventures—would prove to be prophetic. But High Times soon threatened to become nothing more than the “hip capitalism” that he’d railed against for so long, and Forcade felt his enemies closing in.
     
    Agents of Chaos is an entertaining, fast-paced tale about attacks on journalism, campaigns of disinformation, governmental secrecy, corporatism, and political factionalism. The tragedies and triumphs of Tom Forcade mirror the cultural transformations of 1970s America, wrought by forces that continue to clash today in the tenuous spaces between unrest, activism, and power.”

    Google Drive Logo DRIVE
    Book 1

    Cosmic Scholar: The Life and Times of Harry Smith

    ★★★★★

    John F. Szwed

    Book 1

    Every Man for Himself and God Against All: A Memoir

    ★★★★★

    Werner Herzog

    Book 1

    Extremely Online: The Untold Story of Fame, Influence, and Power on the Internet

    ★★★★★

    Taylor Lorenz

    Book 1

    Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin): A Memoir

    ★★★★★

    Sly Stone

    Book 1

    There Was Nothing You Could Do: Bruce Springsteen’s “Born In The U.S.A.” and the End of the Heartland

    ★★★★★

    Steven Hyden

    Book 1

    The Last Yakuza: Life and Death in the Japanese Underworld

    ★★★★★

    Jake Adelstein

    Book 1

    This Must Be the Place: Music, Community and Vanished Spaces in New York City

    ★★★★★

    Jesse Rifkin

    Book 1

    The Future

    ★★★★★

    Naomi Alderman

    Book 1

    If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution

    ★★★★★

    Vincent Bevins

    Book 1

    Shock Induction

    ★★★★★

    Chuck Palahniuk

    Book 1

    What the Dead Know: Learning About Life as a New York City Death Investigator

    ★★★★★

    Barbara Butcher

    Book 1

    When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s

    ★★★★★

    John Ganz

    Book 1

    You Dreamed of Empires

    ★★★★★

    Álvaro Enrigue

    Book 1

    Down the Hill: My Descent into the Double Murder in Delphi

    ★★★★★

    Susan Hendricks