The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. de Wolfe, Tom - 1968

New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1968. First edition of the classic account of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters during their bus trip across America in the late 1960's. Octavo, original cloth. Boldly signed by Tom Wolfe on the title page. Jacket design by Milton Glaser. An exceptional example. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test was published by Farrar Straus Giroux in 1968 and is considered ideal insight into the hippie movement. The New York Times said the novel is not simply the best book on the hippies, it is the essential book . . . the pushing, ballooning heart of the matter . . . Vibrating dazzle!" Indeed, "[a]mong journalists, Wolfe is a genuine poet; what makes him so good is his ability to get inside, to not merely describe (although he is a superb reporter), but to get under the skin of a phenomenon and transmit its metabolic rhythm" (Newsweek). The journalist himself is considered by Terry Southern "a groove and a gas. Everyone should send him money and other fine things. Hats off to Tom Wolfe!"