Grateful Dead Book Reviews

Ben Fong-Torres pairs a written history of the band with removeable ephemera: replicas of bumper stickers, backstage passes, concert flyers and typed correspondence from the band. An accompanying CD adds another layer, featuring interviews with Jerry Garcia, Mickey Hart, Steve Parish, along with excerpts from press conferences. By having readers handle the history, and not simply read it, mirrors the Grateful Dead concert experience, which was never intended for passive liste

Published in 1996, Robert Greenfield’s "Dark Star" is an oral biography of Jerry Garcia built from the memories of the people who knew him. Instead of a single narrator steering the ship, Greenfield lets a chorus handle the navigation: family, friends and bandmates who sometimes harmonize, sometimes contradict one another, and often do both in the same breath. Individual recollections range from a couple of sentences to the occasional full page. The result is living portrait.

Bill Kreutzmann’s Deal is not a historian’s chronicle of the Grateful Dead. It reads like a field recording from the drummer’s stool told by the man who held the beat. Co-written with journalist Benjy Eisen, the book is exceptionally candid, percussive and sometimes messy in a way that feels honest rather than careless.