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In 1968, Tom Wolfe published the book that would narrate the American sixties before they turned into postcard clichés of flowers, painted buses and nostalgia sold on t-shirts. At the center: Ken Kesey, author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and his California crew, the Merry Pranksters. A few years earlier they’d bought an old school bus, painted it in riotous colors and barreled across the country to New York with cameras, microphones, Neal Cassady at the wheel, LSD still legal and far too much faith in chaos. The plan was to make a film. Of course the road refused to behave like a script: footage impossible to assemble, sound that wouldn’t cooperate, overly wired passengers, a bus that looked alternately like a party, a cult and a very well-decorated bad idea. Back in California the excess spilled into the Acid Tests: lights, music, Grateful Dead, a crowd at night, Kool-Aid spiked, and that odd sense that a generation was less after a destination than a crew to disappear with. Wolfe showed up with a notebook and found the real story: the bus wasn’t merely a trip. It was a tribe inventing its own myth. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test turns that psychedelic chaos into electric prose: speed, slang, noise, vertigo, freedom parked badly. A book for anyone who’s ever wanted to hop on the bus, even without knowing who was driving. Quick access: Work: The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test Author: Tom Wolfe Country / Year: United States, 1968 Read the book via the link in bio. Credits: Text: Tom Wolfe, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test Images: Ken Kesey / Merry Pranksters / bus Furthur / Acid Tests archives / D.R.