The Most Dangerous Man in America

Timothy Leary, Richard Nixon and the Hunt for the Fugitive King of LSD

By: Bill Minutaglio, Steven L. Davis

Narrated by: Peter Ganim

Length: 12 hrs and 24 mins

Publisher's summary

From Bill Minutaglio and Steven L. Davis, authors of the PEN Center USA award-winning Dallas 1963, comes a madcap narrative about Timothy Leary's daring prison escape and run from the law.

On the moonlit evening of September 12, 1970, an ex-Harvard professor with a genius IQ studies a 12-foot high fence topped with barbed wire. A few months earlier, Dr. Timothy Leary, the High Priest of LSD, had been running a gleeful campaign for California governor against Ronald Reagan. Now, Leary is six months into a 10-year prison sentence for the crime of possessing two marijuana cigarettes.

Aided by the radical Weather Underground, Leary's escape from prison is the counterculture's union of "dope and dynamite", aimed at sparking a revolution and overthrowing the government. Inside the Oval Office, President Richard Nixon drinks his way through sleepless nights as he expands the war in Vietnam and plots to unleash the United States government against his ever-expanding list of domestic enemies. Antiwar demonstrators are massing by the tens of thousands; homemade bombs are exploding everywhere; Black Panther leaders are threatening to burn down the White House; and all the while Nixon obsesses over tracking down Timothy Leary, whom he has branded "the most dangerous man in America."

Based on freshly uncovered primary sources and new firsthand interviews, The Most Dangerous Man in America is an American thriller that takes listeners along for the gonzo ride of a lifetime. Spanning 28 months, President Nixon's careening, global manhunt for Dr. Timothy Leary winds its way among homegrown radicals, European aristocrats, a Black Panther outpost in Algeria, an international arms dealer, hash-smuggling hippies from the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, and secret agents on four continents, culminating in one of the trippiest journeys through the American counterculture.

©2018 Bill Minutaglio and Steven L. Davis (P)2018 Hachette Audio

A very fun book!

I really enjoyed this book. It’s a fun ride showing many facets of people and organizations that are now historically significant. The narrator at first to me seemed robotic but I stuck with it and I’m glad I did because I ended up really liking it. He does a great Nixon.

couldn't get past the first few chapters

I struggled to get past the annoyingly egotistical wording of the book. The author told story in a rather annoying way considering the context of the drug Tim Leary advocated for.

It was a stone gas man. It was heavy and far out

When this world turns to Rubble and he Cockroaches take control they will reference this book to find out what preceded them and low and behold peace will once again reign.

interesting subject

Interesting book. Timothy Leary led an interesting life. You couldn't make this up story. It would be unbelievable.

Deep details of a period of time

I found the approach taken by the author to be interesting. It's a chronological accounting of the specific period of time in which Dr. Timothy Leary was arrested and on the run pending further incarceration. The story seems to be lifted from the datebooks and/or journals of those involved. As such, it seems to be a pretty good source of reporting.This is no hagiography. Leary, as well as all of the other era-specific leaders, are shown to be extremely fallible and as questionable where leadership iis concerned as Richard Nixon himself. The audio narration is fine, if unremarkable.

Excellent story.

Never a dull moment. I’m old enough to know who Timothy Leary is, but was young enough in the 60’s to not know his story. Great book. I highly recommend it.

The quintessential hijacking of conformity and the birth of the psychological revolution

The flame that sparked the fire LD of the counter cultural revolution. I was very close to meeting him in the late 90’s - taught me how to turn in tune I and drop out. I wouldn’t be surprised if I was on Nixon’s list!

A hallucinatory trip through a nonexistent history

Timothy Leary did not exist.

He was merely a hallucination of the world's historical consciousness on a cosmic trip.

He did not exist. His allies did not exist. His lovers, friends and contemporaries never existed. Most important of all, his era of revolution, spiritual awakening, free love and resistance to the power structure never existed.

The world, exhausted from the rigidity of the conservative, stifling and materialistic path that the human animal was on simply decided to take a break, smoke some fantastic cosmic hash and fade for about a decade and a half into a comforting trip where it could dream about a reality which wasn't so straight laced and suffocating. And Timothy Leary was the avatar through which that trip unfolded.

That moment in time never actually happened, because the world which existed in 1959 is the same one which got up from its nap in 1975 and continued down its materialistic, militaristic, and self destructive path, leading to the nightmare of today.

No, none of it ever existed. It was all just a surreal vision of what might have been, but never was. Of what may finally be once the entire tired, decayed thing finally collapses in on itself.

Also, I really enjoyed the book. Good times.