Customer Rating: 
Summary: Superb
Comment: This is one of the best books I have read -certainly the best in the category of social history. Jay Stevens has researched his material meticulously and has delivered the narrative in a most enthralling manner. I found it hard to lay the book down. Whether, like me, you lived through the psychedelic experience of the sixties or you have but a passive interest, you will be amazed to learn of the full impact that the psychedelic culture has had on Western society, religion and philosophy -right through to the chemical hedonism of today.
This is truly a superb read!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Tune in, turn on, drop out!
Comment: I bought this on the recommendation of Dr. Stanley Krippner in a lecture on ayahuasca. It is absolutely the best book I have read on the history of the psychedelic movement during the past 100 years or so. Timothy Leary is not dead - he's only outside looking in. :-)
Customer Rating:
Summary: The Sixties, Microgram by Microgram
Comment: This is the definitive account of the 1960s psychedelic drug scene. Stevens does a great job of conveying the highs and lows of LSD and its proponents. His ability to relate endless facts while retaining a fast-paced narrative structure is amazing. I found this one of the most "addicting" books out there about the significance of drugs in American culture. Stevens reviews all the major personalities: Albert Hoffman, Timothy Leary, Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, the Grateful Dead, Alan Watts, Jack Kerouac, Aldous Huxley, and more. If you're interested in this electric decade, the power of psychedelics to warp the mind, or any of the poet-prophets who were compelled to experiment with and sing the praises of acid then this book is sure to delight.
Customer Rating:
Summary: lost history
Comment: This should be required reading in American History. Who knew Canada had legal LSD centers? And the characters- Nin, Huxley, Kesey, Leary and Capt.Al Hubbard (??). Will we ever see their like again? Really a very sad story, and a fascinating one.
Nice to see the Chief Boo Hoo, old Art Kleps in there as well.
Sen. Kennedy: "Is your title really Chief Boo Hoo?"
Art Kleps: "I'm afraid so, sir."
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Very good but ignores many facets of certain indivuals
Comment: This was a very good book. You get lots of interesting stuff about Aldous Huxley, the famous beat writers, Owsley, Timothy Leary, Ken Kesey and the evolution of the so called counterculture as a whole.
The problems that I have with Storming Heaven is not for what was in it but what was left out. For one Stevens was WAY too easy on Timothy Leary. The author seemed almost like a school girl with a crush when he recounts his visit to Learys home for an interview for the book. He comes off more as a fan than he does an objective writer at times when he deals with Leary. Why wasn't it mentioned that it has come out that Leary was a government informant and information he gave led to the death of two members of the Weather Underground? Its also a known fact that Leary was surrounded by CIA assets and there is a lot of evidence that he was a government agent himself, and at the least he was feeding them information.
There is also a fleeting mention that wasn't elaborated on about Ken Kesey that he had LSD experiments done on him at Stanford by the guy that ended up in charge of the CIAs Mkultra mind control program. This really makes me wonder about Kesey. Its more or less accepted history that the first LSD to get out on the street level was what Kesey stole from the medicine chest at his job as a night shift janitor at a mental hospital and distributed it among his elitist friends. Kesey went from writing what was probably the best novel written during the 1960's to, while becoming a counterculture hero, never writing another thing worth reading again. Did doing too much LSD scramble his brains and ruin his creativity or was his creativity nullified by Mkultra programming? Its hard to say for sure but I have to wonder if Kesey was not under some sort of mind control or was being used by the CIA in one way or another. There are a lot of unanswered questions in my mind about Kesey.
They also fleetingly mention the Brotherhood of Eternal Love who were major LSD distributors and were known to be full of CIA people and had a close association with a Jewish man named Ron Starks who was a CIA spook that also happened to the biggest LSD dealer in the world. Starks was not even given the first mention in this book!
I mean with all these ivy league, Mkultra and CIA connections to the elites of the so called counterculture I have to seriously wonder how much of the hippy movement of the late 60's was an organic rebellion against what was (and still is) a very repressive society both socially and politically and how much of it was intentional social engineering that came from the highest levels of the power structure. Many people believe that the anti-war movement was flooded with drugs, in particular LSD, by federal agents. Its well known that the government tried to subvert and destroy the anti-war movement with the cointelpro program so why wouldn't they also use drugs to try to destroy it? While it can't be denied that LSD has enhanced many an artist, writer and musicians work can you honestly say that sitting around frying on acid all the time is going to do anything but disable political activists who in many cases were in a life and death struggle? Besides that the fact remains that many people became permanently damaged as result of doing acid.
All that said I would definitely recomend reading or of you can get it cheap, buying Storming Heaven. I could hardly put it down once I started reading it. I realize that this book was more geared toward looking into what psychelic drugs can do with the mind and its exponents history and theories on the subject than any conspiratorial maneuverings by the US government involving LSD but it just didn't go deep enough into the rabbit hole for my tastes.
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