Milan Melvin was one of the most fascinating figures out of the sixties. In fact, a case could be made that he helped to shape the time of our lives. Peter Laufer is one of the sharpest journalists out of the sixties. In one of his last major decisions, Milan asked Peter to help him tell his story. Together they do, and it is one for the ages. Light up, buckle up and enjoy the flight. — Ben Fong-Torres In a world of posers, Milan was the rare real thing. An adventurer and a strong friend. My friend. — David Crosby When Milan Melvin rose point astride his iron palomino Harley, our caravan slept easy in the sixties, knowing he had one eye on the bad guys and heaven in his holster. — Wavy Gravy Lean, lanky, self-contained, charming, and a natural gentleman – one of a dying breed even then. — Joan Baez Milan Melvin was a driven, elusive, creative, lovable adventurer who colored the lives of all around him. His many-faceted career started with a stint as an undercover operator for the FBI at UC Berkeley – until he started falsifying reports. He went on to trade Native American jewelry, import marijuana, hang with Hell’s Angels, co-found alternative radio – notably the legendary KSAN San Francisco – work on films, produce music, befriend Janis Joplin, and marry Mimi Farina, the sister of Joan Baez, who wrote her very first song about him. 
 Leaving America for 10 years, he lived with Tibetan Khampa guerrillas, funded a daycare center for Tibetan refugee children in Nepal, smuggled gems out of India, Burma and China, and manufactured jewelry in Thailand, before settling in Bali. 
 On his return, Milan worked with film director Carl Gottlieb on Caveman, appeared on Saturday Night Live, produced TV shows and managed the acting career of former Oakland Raider John “Tooz” Matuszak. Returning to charitable work, he and his wife Georgeanne raised and funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of medical and material aid to anti-government organizations during El Salvador’s civil war. In his last decade Milan lived with his wife in seclusion in Wolf Creek, Oregon, before moving to Mexico for his final adventures.

Highlights of a Lowlife: The Autobiography of Milan Melvin

Biographies & Memoirs

Melvin, Milan

Arts & Literature

Jorvik Press

David Bowie was 22 years old and still living with his parents in southeast London when, quite by chance, he met Mary Finnigan while visiting her upstairs neighbours in nearby Beckenham. Still an unrecognised talent haunting the London folk clubs, desperately seeking paid gigs, he couldn’t even dream of a future as a global rock phenomenon. 
Life started to take interesting turns after he moved in with Mary and her two children in the spring of 1969. With a small group of psychedelic pioneers, they launched the Beckenham Arts Lab in a local pub and organized a free music festival in the town’s park. 
That summer his first hit, Space Oddity, made it into the charts and became the theme song for the first moon landing. He was suddenly on a trajectory towards superstardom. 
Millions of words have been written about Bowie’s life, but his early days as a struggling songwriter and performer have been shrouded in hearsay. Here is the full story of his pivotal year in Beckenham, written before his death by his friend, lover and landlady, one of the first people to encourage and support him. 
For this expanded first edition, the author has added an epilogue on the aftermath of Bowie’s death two days after the book was first published. New images include two previously unpublished photos of his Beckenham days.

Psychedelic Suburbia: David Bowie and the Beckenham Arts Lab

Finnigan, Mary

Honourable, impassioned and tender — Sara Maitland A quiet triumph of the spirit — Library Journal A soul-searching testimony — The Observer Rosemary Bailey gives an unsentimental yet heartbreaking account of her brother’s life, from his strict upbringing by a fundamentalist father, through ordination as an Anglican priest, then gay liberation, to his diagnosis with AIDS and a long debilitating illness that he never allowed to defeat him. Rosemary captures the sad drama that consumes Simon Bailey, rector of the South Yorkshire village of Dinnington, as he breaks the news of his homosexuality and his illness, first to friends, then to close parishioners, and finally to his family, the church authorities and the media. While slowly succumbing to AIDS, the Rev. Bailey continues to hold services in the parish church, while his parishioners care for him around the clock through his final months. The story was the subject of the BBC Everyman documentary, Simon’s Cross.

Scarlet Ribbons: A Priest with AIDS

Bailey, Rosemary

Leaders & Notable People

A great street-level history of one of the world's most famous small music venues. This inside story is the real thing. — John May The Generalist Mini-skirted Debbie Greenberg’s… first-hand, fan’s-eye, gossipy chit-chat and fashion notes have tactile authenticity, from resident DJ, Bob Wooler’s ‘Hi there, all you cave-dwellers,’ to bassist Stuart Sutcliffe standing with his back to the audience ‘so no one could see how he was playing’, and Pete Best (‘sultry, fiercely good-looking and oozed sex appeal’). — Andrew Darlington, R2 magazine A fab read for any 60s music fan. Richly illustrated with… rare photos, posters and press cuttings... The day Paul McCartney popped in with his new girlfriend, Linda, to show her where the Beatles story began is particularly special. — Simon Fine sixtyplusurfers.com As a teenager Debbie Greenberg was spending far too much time at the Cavern Club in her hometown of Liverpool, England. It was already the most famous music club in the world, where she had been dazzled by the Beatles’ debut performance and had witnessed their rise to stardom for two years before watching the local heroes leave home. Then in 1966, after the previous owner declared bankruptcy, her father asked her out of the blue if she thought it would be a good idea to take over the club. It was an offer she couldn’t refuse. She’d been a Cavern fanatic since it was a jazz club, hardly missing a lunchtime or evening rock session until its closure a few weeks before – amid mass protests by Liverpool youth. Now she was suddenly part of a new family business, faced with the task of helping to breathe new life into the now dilapidated rock ’n’ rollin' launchpad of the legendary Mersey Beat. This first-hand account of her ten years frequenting and eventually helping to run the original Cavern Club is an authentic inside story of this unique Beatles shrine, full of triumphs and failures – and surprise celebrity encounters. Richly illustrated with dozens of photos, posters and press clips.

Cavern Club: The Inside Story

Greenberg, Debbie

I had forgotten that I, too, grew up existentially, until I read Ron Manheimer’s absorbing new book about life, aging, identity, and consciousness. Moving effortlessly between personal memoir and philosophical meditation, Manheimer takes us back and forth in time to raise timeless questions. The journey is intellectually exciting, for sure, as we encounter deep insights into the human condition – but it is also surprisingly and profoundly emotional. With a light touch, Manheimer stirs the soul. — Dan P. McAdams, Henry Wade Rogers Professor of Psychology, Northwestern University, author of The Art and Science of Personality Development Ronald Manheimer's Growing Up Existentially offers an authentic testimonial to the enduring relevance of existentialism in providing meaning to our individual and collective lived experiences. Each chapter invites the reader to behold a facet of the existentialist philosophical panorama. All along keeping the discussion relatable, personal, vivid and refreshing. The end product is a truly lucid and cogent story of existentialism that is exploratory, provocative and incredibly engaging. — Keya Maitra, Professor and Chair, Dept. of Philosophy, Univ. of North Carolina, Asheville Philosophers, novelists and playwrights of the existentialist tradition continue to be reprinted, discussed and performed across the world, a testimony to their enduring relevance. Embracing the vitality of these engaging and provocative thinkers and writers, History of Consciousness philosopher Ronald Manheimer takes both newcomers and devotees on a personal search for meaning while addressing twelve key ideas that capture the essence of the existential outlook. 
Exploring situations from everyday life, the author reflects on the most abstract existential terms, such as nothingness, temporality and absurdism. And since existentialism’s leading lights – Kierkegaard, Sartre, de Beauvoir, and Camus – lived out their ideas in both private and public spheres, Manheimer delves into their biographies to provide a window into scenes of love and loss, war and political upheaval, friendship and betrayal. 
Manheimer offers readers a personal view of how historical consciousness was transformed in Europe just as its reverberations reached American shores in the mid-twentieth century. While other philosophical movements such as structuralism, deconstructionism and post-modernism eclipsed the popularity of existentialism, the author shows how its thought currents have inspired the liberation movements of the 20th and 21st centuries – feminism, anti-colonialism, Black Power, and even the age revolution.

Growing Up Existentially: A Journey from Absurdity to Consciousnes

Politics & Social Sciences

Manheimer, Dr Ronald J

Philosophy

For young women who have lacked the influence of a supportive father figure during their formative years, hindrances such as attachment disorder, co-dependence, sexual promiscuity, and feelings of unworthiness may have prevented them from pursuing their life’s goals and leading an emotionally healthy life.  Self-initiated emotional transformation is like trying to find your way through the dark in a blindfold and earmuffs. Without the aid of practical tools to help disperse the impediments, it’s hard to realize dreams and fulfill desires while haunted by behaviors rooted in the past.  Girls without Daddies identifies many of the harmful behavioral patterns women are locked into as a result of childhood experiences without a positive father figure. Using examples from her own life, as a fellow-sufferer who made it through a successful business career, the author outlines the key thought processes that can help overcome typical self-defeating behaviors to forge a better life – happy, stable and successful in relationships. As a kindred spirit herself, the author provides a straightforward guide to emotional healing that is both personal and practical.

Girls Without Daddies: Filling the Void of a Fatherless Childhood

Self-Help

McPike, Cindy

Happiness

Bakersfield brings the dark side of the 1950s dust-choked town to life in this Raymond Chandleresque tale of crime and corruption. A winner from a talented writer who knows how to keep the surprises coming.
 Phillip Margolin, New York Times bestselling author of The Third Victim
It’s the mid-1950s, and the post-war American dream has come into full focus in Southern California. Suburbia, freeways, fast food, television and nuclear paranoia. James Stone, a career cop in LA, is along for the ride – until he becomes enmeshed in an LAPD scandal that costs him his job, his wife, and his home. 
He finds himself exiled to Bakersfield, California, the only place he can still find work as a cop. It’s a mean little town. Hot, flat and dry. Dominated by agribusiness and oil and little else. But it ‘s also brewing the flip side of the American dream, with wild honky-tonks playing the first electric music, motorcycle gangs, the Ku Klux Klan, and test pilots from nearby Edwards air base slumming on the weekends. 
Stone works homicide and his first case is a murdered young girl found floating face down in the Kern River. It puts him in touch with Christine Harmon, who contracts as the county’s forensic pathologist and runs a small clinic on the side. At the time, woman doctors are almost non-existent, and Stone finds Harmon’s spirited independence fascinating. 
His investigation takes him deep into the local bar scene, where young players like Buck Owens and Merle Haggard are just getting their start. But then a second homicide pops up, a very sticky one for this ultra-conservative, bible-thumping community. A wealthy businessman is found murdered in his home, apparently the victim of a vicious young drifter living at a seedy motel bar on the edge of town. 
With the aid of Dr. Harmon, Stone follows a trail of depravity and corruption that reaches into the highest levels of the local business and legal community. And once again he finds himself caught up in a scandal that threatens to ruin him – and this time maybe even kill him.

Bakersfield: A Crime Novel

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

OUELLETTE, Pierre

Mystery

There is little doubt that Moseby Confidential will become an essential resource for anyone with an interest in Night Moves, as well as neo-noir, and the seventies film more generally. Diligently researched with a close attention to the existing literature, archival material and supplemented by new interviews (including with Clark and Warren, and relatives of Penn and Sharp), Gear uncovers information about the movie’s development, production, and post-production that will be eye-openers for even the most avid fans of the film. -- Jonathan Kirshner, Mid Century Cinema
This definitive study of Arthur Penn’s Night Moves is the first extended monograph on this cult classic which is often singled out as one of the great irreverent neo-noir movies of mid-1970s New Hollywood, alongside Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye and Roman Polanski's Chinatown. 
Author Matthew Asprey Gear draws on a wealth of new and unpublished archival interviews with key cast and crew members and witnesses to the production of one of the last radical private eye films of the period, starring Gene Hackman, Melanie Griffith and Jennifer Warren. 
Moseby Confidential tells the story of the fraught collaboration between two artists of very different sensibilities – Scottish scriptwriter Alan Sharp, the hopeless fatalist; American director Arthur Penn, the agitating progressive. They came together in 1973 to make a dark film about an America bereft of answers. Everything seemed in place for a triumph. Finally, in careers plagued by compromise, there was both an adequate budget and artistic freedom. 
Gene Hackman’s performance would expertly particularize an archetype fracturing before our eyes – the knightly private detective unable to solve his case, the macho American male desperate for certainty but lost at sea. But neither Penn nor Sharp was satisfied with the resulting movie and disagreed over its final form. 
After a long delay, Warner Brothers cut its losses and dumped Night Moves into cinemas with a half-hearted publicity campaign. The movie’s reviews were mixed and it failed to make a profit in the summer of 1975. That season was dominated by Steven Spielberg’s Jaws, which provided Hollywood with a new and super-profitable model of film production. 
Yet Night Moves is now recognized as one of the defining films of the 1970s, both as a profound human drama and as an enduring evocation of the zeitgeist. This Technicolor neo-noir helped reinvent and redeem the private detective movie, while offering deep and disturbing insight into the moral ambiguities of the Watergate era.

Moseby Confidential: Arthur Penn’s Night Moves and the Rise of Neo-Noir

Humor & Entertainment

Gear, Matthew Asprey

Movies

This book is the story of how a penniless Tibetan refugee with fierce ambition managed to establish himself in the West as a renowned Buddhist lama and hoodwink thousands of people, including show business luminaries, tycoons and politicians, for more than 30 years. Sogyal Lakar left his birthplace in eastern Tibet aged eight when his family fled the Chinese invasion to seek refuge in India. Arriving in England in the early 1970s, he brought with him traditional ideas and attitudes rooted in a culture whose spiritual sophisticated was coupled with near-feudal social norms. His transition was spectacularly successful. Sogyal Rinpoche, as he became known, was a charismatic multi-millionaire, credited as the author of a best-selling book. He starred in a Hollywood movie and his Rigpa Fellowship attracted followers across the globe. At the peak of his fame he was the most powerful and best-known Tibetan holy man after the Dalai Lama. But, as revealed here, it turns out that Sogyal was a charlatan who was never trained as a lama. He stands accused of financial and sexual misconduct, physical violence and fabricated credentials. Now seriously ill, he is a fugitive rumoured to be in Thailand beyond the reach of police and civil investigations. This book does not sensationalise the perverse behaviour that caused profound suffering to scores of devotees. Based on interviews with victims and eyewitnesses, together with detailed research and first-hand experience, it echoes the feminist perspective highlighted by the Me Too and Time's Up movements. It is also a story about the culture clash that occurs when the misogyny of old Tibet is greeted with naïve acceptance and adulation by spiritual seekers in the West.

Sex and Violence in Tibetan Buddhism: The Rise and Fall of Sogyal Rinpoche

Hogendoorn, Rob

Community & Culture

An unintended event. This was the bland phrase used to describe Luise’s sudden death in the psychiatric ward at Amager Hospital in Copenhagen, Denmark. She was 32. Dear Luise is a mother’s deeply personal account of her struggle to ensure her daughter’s survival through 20 years of treatment in the Danish mental health system. It is an alarming – and thoroughly documented – exposé of the abject failure of the medication-based treatment regimen routinely imposed on vulnerable psychiatric patients. This book is also a poignant tale of love and hope, brimming with tender memories of the creativity, originality and wry humor of a very capable, intelligent young woman. 
Behind Luise’s ultimate fate we see the smug certainty of mental health professionals, both doctors and caregivers, and the concomitant dehumanization of their patients through indifference, harassment, coercion and the use of force. In this tragic case, the mother’s investigation also reveals a shocking trail of incompetence and dishonesty – repeated misdiagnosis, professional collusion, “missing” official records, falsified hospital charts, victim-blaming, and a complete lack of accountability. 
Her mother’s ill-fated trust in Denmark’s healthcare system led an 11-year-old girl with misunderstood adjustment problems into a doctor-mandated drug hell. First she was wrongly diagnosed and dosed with powerful anti-epilepsy medicine. Then the severe side-effects were treated with antipsychotics that caused even more serious adverse reactions, both mental and physical. Complaints from mother and daughter ran into a stone wall, and all meaningful dialogue was cut short. The system had only one response – increase the medication. Luise’s tragedy is far from unique in Denmark – or indeed any other advanced industrialized country. Towards the end of her life she knew what was happening to her. Luise told her mother: On my gravestone I want it to say that it was the medicine that killed me.

Dear Luise: A story of power and powerlessness in Denmark's psychiatric care system

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Christensen, Dorrit Cato

Psychology & Counseling

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