Acid Hype

Stephen Siff is assistant professor of journalism at Miami University, Ohio.

"Siff provides two parallel narratives about LSD. The first focuses on the history of LSD, its popularity beginning in the mid-1950s and its fall from grace a decade later; the second concerns the way in which media attention to LSD changed journalistic methods. Recommended."--Choice"The rich content of consumer magazines, especially those published before television became culturally dominant, remains largely unexamined by media historians. Acid Hype illustrates how rewarding study of mass-circulation magazines can be. Who could anticipate Stephen Siff would find that such bedrock Republicans as Henry and Clare Boothe Luce personally embraced hallucinogenic drugs and encouraged their use in the pages of Life and Time?"--Joseph Bernt, Professor Emeritus of Journalism, Ohio University"Stephen Siff. . . is never less than shrewd and readable in his assessment of how various news media differed in method and attitude when covering the psychedelic beat."--Inside Higher Ed

• Acknowledgments   xi Introduction: Midcentury Media's Trip with LSD   11. Early Restrictions on Drug Speech, 1900-1956   172. Introducing LSD, 1953-1956   423. Creating a Psychedelic Past, 1954-1960   684. Research at the Intersection of Media and Medicine, 1957-1962   895. Luce, Leary, and LSD, 1963-1965   1156. Moral Panic and Media Hype, 1966-1968   145Postscript: Psychedelic Media   181 Notes   191Index   227