Breen presents a tantalizing hypothetical, one that would have had an inestimable impact on culture, medicine and perhaps the whole of civilization had it come to pass: What if, in the mid-1950s, Margaret Mead had publicly endorsed psychedelics?.

Lively and engrossing.

Breen handles his complex and frequently bizarre material with skill and sobriety. He marshals a convincing mass of circumstantial evidence as well as documentary fragments that survived the destruction of MK-Ultra records..

An alternate history of psychedelic drugs before their adoption by the counterculture..

Wide-ranging.

Breen blends fleet-footed biography with an accessible analysis of mid-20th-century research into 'psychedelic' experiences.