Book list
From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.

*Starred Review* A scrupulously researched work of narrative history that contains precisely zero longueurs is as rare as a square with a packet of Afghan hashish stowed away in the hollowed-out heel of her boot. Rarer still: a book about Timothy Leary and his incense-lighting, prayer-rug-toting, LSD-evangelizing, ohm-chanting, teenage-girl-sexing cohort that will command the rapt attention of even those among us who find the notion of earnest hippies as unpleasant and recherché as a forgotten hunk of Camembert. Minutaglio and Davis have taken what could have been a painful exercise in bloviating boomer self-aggrandizement and instead fashioned a pitch-perfect, exhilarating work about one of the strangest chapters in the American experience, one so exciting that even the postscript rivets. The authors focus on the 24 months between the time Richard Nixon, neck-deep in Vietnam atrocities and domestic unrest, declared Timothy Leary to be the most dangerous man in America and Leary's fugitive days until his arrest. This was a stroke of narrative genius, for the trajectories of Tricky Dick and the man whom the Swiss called the Pope of Dope include nearly every interesting person alive in the early 1970s, from the Black Panthers to Art Linkletter. Absolutely unforgettable.--Williamson, Eugenia Copyright 2017 Booklist

Library Journal
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In 1970, former Harvard professor and LSD advocate, Timothy Leary (1920-66), with the help of the Weather Underground (at the time known as the Weathermen Underground), broke out of a low-security California prison and fled the country under a false identity. The Richard Nixon administration used Leary's celebrity and reputation as the "High Priest of LSD" as a face for the War on Drugs. If Leary was caught and prosecuted, the administration thought it would be a boon for Nixon's diminishing popularity. As a result, Leary spent the next three years avoiding the FBI and extradition while dropping acid and hoping for political asylum. This bizarre story is pieced together by PEN Award-winning authors Minutaglio and Davis, who draw heavily on primary sources to create an engaging narrative. At times, it is difficult to tell if the authors are poking fun at Leary or venerating him; perhaps they are doing both. More than simply describe Leary's escape from prison, the hunt that then ensued across North Africa and Europe, and his ultimate capture, the authors document a particular moment in American history and the paranoia that plagued government and counterculture alike. VERDICT For readers interested in the counterculture and mid-20th-century history.-Timothy Berge, SUNY Oswego Lib. © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

A riveting international chase between a tenacious but paranoid cat and a wily but delusional mouse.Minutaglio (In Search of the Blues: A Journey to the Soul of Black Texas, 2010, etc.) and Davis (Curator, Wittliff Collections/Texas State Univ.), who collaborated previously on Dallas 1963 (2014), deliver a rich and frequently hilarious chronicle of the Nixon administration's 28-month pursuit of one very slippery old hippie. The comedy of errors began when Timothy Leary, ex-Harvard professor and America's leading advocate of LSD, received a stiff jail term in California for possessing two marijuana cigarettes. Broke but extremely well-connected on the outside, he staged a daring escape. Almost immediately, he became the top quarry for the new president, who was fending off daily protests from student demonstrators over Vietnam and was bent on showing the world just how tough he was on drugs, crime, and corrupters of youth. Leary quickly proved to be an elusive target; with help from the Weather Underground, he and his wife, Rosemary, holed up in Algeria under the wary protection of Eldridge Cleaver's Black Panthers. Leary found himself having to forge a new persona"a marriage of dope and dynamite, flower and flames," as one associate put itand it was not a comfortable fit. The free-living, free-loving Leary had a most turbulent asylum amid gun-toting revolutionaries who were all about killing the fascist pigs. Soon enough, Leary was dodging Nixon and his cronies all over the world. Ultimately, it's a story whose twists would involve a wealthy playgirl, a shadowy financier, and government officials who were torn between aiding the Hanoi-bombing hunter or his acid-gulping prey.Minutaglio and Davis are superb storytellers, and throughout the narrative, they nimbly move between their two converging subjects. Their account is expertly detailed and blessedly fat-free. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.