NCW Libraries

In her first novel inspired by a true story, Jane Green re-imagines the life of troubled icon Talitha Getty in this transporting story from a forgotten chapter of the Swinging '60s. From afar Talitha's life seemed perfect. In her twenties, and already a famous model and actress, she moved from London to a palace in Marrakesh, with her husband Paul Getty, the famous oil heir. There she presided over a swirling ex-pat scene filled with music, art, free...

Girls--their vulnerability, strength, and passion to belong--are at the heart of this stunning first novel for readers of Jeffrey Eugenides's The Virgin Suicides and Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad.Northern California, during the violent end of the 1960s. At the start of summer, a lonely and thoughtful teenager, Evie Boyd, sees a group of girls in the park, and is immediately caught by their freedom, their careless dress, their dangerous...

A Brazilian man and a Dutch woman embark on an extraordinary journey of self-discovery as they travel by bus from Amsterdam to Kathmandu against a backdrop of the protests and sexual-liberation experiments of the 1960s. Drawing on the rich experience of his own life, best-selling author Paulo Coelho takes us back in time to relive the dreams of a generation that longed for peace and dared to challenge the established social order. In Hippie, he tells...

Northern California, during the violent end of the 1960s. At the start of summer, a lonely and thoughtful teenager, Evie Boyd, sees a group of girls in the park, and is immediately caught by their freedom, their careless dress, their dangerous aura of abandon. Soon, Evie is in thrall to Suzanne, a mesmerizing older girl, and is drawn into the circle of a soon-to-be infamous cult and the man who is its charismatic leader. Hidden in the hills, their...

"A book that's also the beginning of a movement, Bill McKibben's debut novel Radio Free Vermont follows a band of Vermont patriots who decide that their state might be better off as its own republic. As the host of Radio Free Vermont--"underground, underpowered, and underfoot"--seventy-two-year-old Vern Barclay is currently broadcasting from an "undisclosed and double-secret location." With the help of a young computer prodigy named Perry Alterson,...

A deep dive into the life of Stewart Brand, a legendary pioneer of LSD, cyberspace, futurism, and modern environmentalism. Brand created the revolutionary do-it-yourself publication The Whole Earth Catalog, which Steve Jobs famously called 3Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google existed.4

A free-flowing, freewheeling, counter-culture comedy set during the turbulent 60's adapted from Guthrie's musical monologue Alice's Restaurant Massacre. Guthrie portrays the embodiment of America's youth, a young man who sees his life beginning to unravel through psychedelic drug-fueled haze, as he and his friends (and the plot) spin toward an explosive conclusion.

A thrilling account of the Altamont Festival, and the dark side of the '60s. If Woodstock tied the ideals of the '60s together, Altamont unraveled them. In Just a Shot Away, writer and critic Saul Austerlitz tells the story of "Woodstock West," where the Rolling Stones hoped to end their 1969 American tour triumphantly with the help of the Grateful Dead, the Jefferson Airplane, and 300,000 fans. Instead, the concert featured a harrowing series of...

In this breathtaking cultural history filled with exclusive, never-before-revealed details, celebrated rock journalist Joel Selvin tells the definitive story of the Rolling Stones' infamous Altamont concert in San Francisco, the disastrous historic event that marked the end of the idealistic 1960s. The product of 20 years of research and dozens of interviews with many key players, including medical staff, Hells Angels members, the stage crew, and...

"The nineteenth-century countercultures that came to define the bohemian lifestyle spanned both sides of the Atlantic, ranging from Walt Whitman to Josephine Baker, and from Gertrude Stein to Thelonius Monk. Bohemians is the graphic history of this movement and its illustrious figures, recovering the utopian ideas behind millennial communities, and covering the rise of Greenwich Village, the multiracial and radical jazz world, and West Coast and Midwest...