"The Dead has been an inspiring source of light for countless people. Dennis McNally's riveting tale of the longest strangest trip will take you on a high-altitude training course and leave you prepared for the next lightning bolt of social and spiritual revelation." –Bill Walton
"This is McNally's view of what went down. It's more often right than wrong and done with love, not a grudge, which goes a long way toward excusing another damned book about the Grateful Dead. Any view of us is necessarily a limited interpretation, like an aerial photo of Ground Zero. What Dennis loves and hates about us bears more weight than most interpretations because he took twenty years to get his facts straight. I'll miss him when we kill him." –Robert Hunter
"As I read Dennis's book, I knew he is the one person who could tell the history of the Dead, and why this band survived as it attracted everyone from the so-called hippie generation to those of us firmly in the establishment. It is a well-written and valuable history." -Senator Patrick J. Leahy
Long Strange Trip is the new book (August 2002) detailing the times and history of the American rock band the
Grateful Dead. Writen by
Dennis McNally, the band’s historian and publicist for more than twenty years. McNally has a
Ph.D. card carrying historian and he combines this with his experience as a fairly typical
Dead Head, and his years of work as the band’s publicist.
I haven´t read it yet, but I know McNally personally and think this would be the one book to get it and the Dead zeitgeist right.
The introduction and first chapter of the book can be read at http://dead.net/cavenweb/deadfile/mcnallypreview.html