Dennis McNally
Dennis McNally, author, historian, and longtime publicist for the Grateful Dead, was born into the singular world of the postwar military-industrial complex. The son of an Army counterintelligence officer and a determined mother who pursued a college degree even while battling terminal cancer, McNally’s early years were shaped by frequent relocations, both in the U.S. and abroad, and by a growing awareness of American culture and history. After an education that culminated in graduate studies at the University of Massachusetts, he broke with academic convention by choosing his dissertation topic early: the life and work of Jack Kerouac. His resulting biography, Desolate Angel, published in 1979, impressed Grateful Dead frontman Jerry Gar
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Elijah Wald
Elijah Wald is a musician and writer, with nine published books. Most are about music (blues, folk, world, and Mexican drug ballads), with one about hitchhiking.
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His new book is a revisionist history of popular music, throwing out the usual critical conventions and instead looking at what mainstream pop fans were actually listening and dancing to over the years.
At readings, he also plays guitar and sings...why not?" -
Joel Selvin
San Francisco Chronicle pop music critic Joel Selvin started covering rock shows for the paper shortly after the end of the Civil War. His writing has appeared in a surprising number of other publications that you would think should have known better.
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Michael Lang
Lang was born in Brooklyn to a Jewish family. In 1967, Lang dropped out of New York University and moved to Coconut Grove, Florida to open a head shop. In 1968, after promoting a series of concert events in the Miami area, Lang (with Marshall Brevetz) produced the 1968 Miami Pop Festival. It drew around 25,000 people on day one (May 18) and featured Jimi Hendrix, Frank Zappa, John Lee Hooker, Arthur Brown, and Blue Cheer. On the afternoon of the second day (May 19) it started to rain and the event ended early.
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After he moved to Woodstock, New York and met Artie Kornfeld. The two developed the concept for a major festival event to celebrate the 1960s social movements, and planned to open a recording studio in the town of Woodstock. With Kornf -
Robert Greenfield
A former Associate Editor of the London bureau of Rolling Stone magazine, Robert Greenfield is the critically acclaimed author of several classic rock books, among them S.T.P.: A Journey Through America with the Rolling Stones, as well as the definitive biographies of Timothy Leary and Ahmet Ertegun. With Bill Graham, he is the co-author of Bill Graham Presents: My Life Inside Rock and Out, which won the ASCAP- Deems Taylor Award. An award winning novelist, playwright, and screenwriter, his short fiction has appeared in GQ, Esquire, and Playboy magazines. He lives in California.
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Phil Lesh
Philip Chapman Lesh was an American musician and a founding member of the Grateful Dead, with whom he developed a unique style of playing improvised six-string bass guitar. He was their bassist throughout their 30-year career.
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After the group disbanded in 1995, Lesh continued the tradition of Grateful Dead family music with a side project, Phil Lesh and Friends, which paid homage to the Dead's music by playing their repertoire, as well as songs by members of his own group. Lesh operated a music venue called Terrapin Crossroads. From 2009 to 2014, he performed in Furthur alongside former Grateful Dead bandmate Bob Weir. He scaled back touring in 2014 but continued to perform concerts. -
Jack Kerouac
Jean-Louis Lebris de Kérouac, known as Jack Kerouac, was an American novelist and poet who, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, was a pioneer of the Beat Generation.
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Of French-Canadian ancestry, Kerouac was raised in a French-speaking home in Lowell, Massachusetts. He "learned English at age six and spoke with a marked accent into his late teens." During World War II, he served in the United States Merchant Marine; he completed his first novel at the time, which was published more than 40 years after his death. His first published book was The Town and the City (1950), and he achieved widespread fame and notoriety with his second, On the Road, in 1957. It made him a beat icon, and he went on to publish 12 more novels and num -
Rick Steves
Rick Steves is an American travel writer, television personality, and activist known for encouraging meaningful travel that emphasizes cultural immersion and thoughtful global citizenship. Born in California and raised in Edmonds, Washington, he began traveling in his teens, inspired by a family trip to Europe. After graduating from the University of Washington with a degree in European history and business, Steves started teaching travel classes, which led to his first guidebook, Europe Through the Back Door, self-published in 1980.
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Steves built his Edmonds-based travel company on the idea that travelers should explore less-touristy areas and engage with local cultures. He gained national prominence as host and producer of Rick Steves' Euro -
Robert Hunter
Librarian note: There is more than one author with this name in the Goodreads database.
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This is the “catch-all” profile.
Current authors
Robert^^Hunter American musician, novelist
Robert^^^Hunter ceramics
Robert^^^^Hunter self help/business
Robert Frank Hunter illustrator
Robert^E. Hunter American diplomat
Robert^^E. Hunter American surgeon
Robert N. Hunter road engineer
Robert P. Hunter veterinary drug specialist
Dead authors
Robert C. Hunter lyricist, The Grateful Dead (1941-2019)
Robert Brockie Hunter British physician (1915-1994)
Robert Hancock Hunter, known for memoir (1813-1902)
Robert M.T. Hunter American politician (1809-1887)
Robert^^^^^Hunter Canadian environmentalist; co-founder of Greenpeace (1941-2005)
Robert^^^^^^Hunter American politician and -
Steve Parish
Steve Parish is an acclaimed Australian photographer, naturalist, and publisher whose work has shaped public appreciation of Australia's natural heritage. Born in Great Britain in 1945, he developed a deep love for nature early in life through activities like spearfishing and hunting. At 17, he joined an expedition to Kangaroo Island led by underwater photography pioneer Igo Oak, an experience that ignited his passion for photography and natural history. After joining the Navy at 18, his posting to Jervis Bay allowed him to hone his diving and photography skills, contributing to research for the Australian Museum and resulting in his first book, Oceans of Life.
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In 1985, he founded Steve Parish Publishing, which became a multimillion-dollar e -
Ken Kesey
Ken Kesey was American writer, who gained world fame with his novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962, filmed 1975). In the 1960s, Kesey became a counterculture hero and a guru of psychedelic drugs with Timothy Leary. Kesey has been called the Pied Piper, who changed the beat generation into the hippie movement.
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Ken Kesey was born in La Junta, CO, and brought up in Eugene, OR. He spent his early years hunting, fishing, swimming; he learned to box and wrestle, and he was a star football player. He studied at the University of Oregon, where he acted in college plays. On graduating he won a scholarship to Stanford University. Kesey soon dropped out, joined the counterculture movement, and began experimenting with drugs. In 1956 he married h -
Richard Russo
RICHARD RUSSO is the author of seven previous novels; two collections of stories; and Elsewhere, a memoir. In 2002 he received the Pulitzer Prize for Empire Falls, which like Nobody’s Fool was adapted to film, in a multiple-award-winning HBO miniseries.
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Carl Hiaasen
Carl Hiaasen was born and raised in Florida. After graduating from the University of Florida, he joined the Miami Herald as a general assignment reporter and went on to work for the newspaper’s weekly magazine and prize-winning investigations team. As a journalist and author, Carl has spent most of his life advocating for the protection of the Florida Everglades. He and his family live in southern Florida.
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Peter Wolf
Peter Wolf was born in the Bronx, moved to Boston to study painting at the Museum School of Fine Arts then left to pursue a life in music with the J.Geils Band. In 1984, he began his career as a solo artist. Wolf continues to paint, record and tour from his home base, in Boston, Massachusetts.
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Rick Atkinson
Rick Atkinson is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of seven works of history, including The Long Gray Line, the Liberation Trilogy (An Army at Dawn, The Day of Battle, and The Guns at Last Light), and The British Are Coming, the first volume of the Revolution Trilogy. His work as a historian and journalist has won numerous awards, including three Pulitzer Prizes.
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Paul Beatty
Paul Beatty (born 1962 in Los Angeles) is a contemporary African-American author. Beatty received an MFA in creative writing from Brooklyn College and an MA in psychology from Boston University. He is a 1980 graduate of El Camino Real High School in Woodland Hills, California.
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In 1990, Paul Beatty was crowned the first ever Grand Poetry Slam Champion of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe. One of the prizes for winning that championship title was the book deal which resulted in his first volume of poetry, Big Bank Takes Little Bank. This would be followed by another book of poetry Joker, Joker, Deuce as well as appearances performing his poetry on MTV and PBS (in the series The United States of Poetry). In 1993, he was awarded a grant from the Foundati -
Elijah Wald
Elijah Wald is a musician and writer, with nine published books. Most are about music (blues, folk, world, and Mexican drug ballads), with one about hitchhiking.
Buy books on Amazon
His new book is a revisionist history of popular music, throwing out the usual critical conventions and instead looking at what mainstream pop fans were actually listening and dancing to over the years.
At readings, he also plays guitar and sings...why not?" -
Phil Lesh
Philip Chapman Lesh was an American musician and a founding member of the Grateful Dead, with whom he developed a unique style of playing improvised six-string bass guitar. He was their bassist throughout their 30-year career.
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After the group disbanded in 1995, Lesh continued the tradition of Grateful Dead family music with a side project, Phil Lesh and Friends, which paid homage to the Dead's music by playing their repertoire, as well as songs by members of his own group. Lesh operated a music venue called Terrapin Crossroads. From 2009 to 2014, he performed in Furthur alongside former Grateful Dead bandmate Bob Weir. He scaled back touring in 2014 but continued to perform concerts. -
Warren Zanes
Zanes holds a PhD in visual and cultural studies from the University of Rochester. He was a member of the Del Fuegos and is set to release his fourth solo recording. He has worked on films including Twenty Feet from Stardom and Martin Scorsese's George Harrison: Living in the Material World and his writing has appeared in The Oxford American, Rolling Stone, and the Los Angeles Times. Zanes served as a V.P. at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum and is currently the Executive Director of Steven Van Zandt's Rock and Roll Forever Foundation. As a professor, Zanes has taught at the University of Rochester, Case Western Reserve University, the School of Visual Arts, and New York University.
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Joel Selvin
San Francisco Chronicle pop music critic Joel Selvin started covering rock shows for the paper shortly after the end of the Civil War. His writing has appeared in a surprising number of other publications that you would think should have known better.
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Kevin Barry
Kevin Barry is an Irish writer. He is the author of two collections of short stories, and the novel City of Bohane, which was the winner of the 2013 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.
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William Least Heat-Moon
From wikipedia:
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William Least Heat-Moon, byname of William Trogdon is an American travel writer of English, Irish and Osage Nation ancestry. He is the author of a bestselling trilogy of topographical U.S. travel writing.
His pen name came from his father saying, "I call myself Heat Moon, your elder brother is Little Heat Moon. You, coming last, therefore, are Least." Born in Kansas City, Missouri, Heat-Moon attended the University of Missouri where he earned bachelor's, master's, and Ph.D. degrees in English, as well as a bachelor's degree in photojournalism. He also served as a professor of English at the university. -
Bill Kreutzmann
BILL KREUTZMANN co-founded the Grateful Dead in 1965 with his musical cohorts Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Ron "Pigpen" McKernan, and Phil Lesh. As the drummer in that band for all 30 years until they disbanded in 1995, he performed more than 2,300 concerts and played on every one of their albums. He continues to play music in various bands including Billy and the Kids. He lives on an organic farm in Hawaii.
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Hannah Selinger
Hannah Selinger is a James Beard Award-nominated lifestyle writer and mother of two based in Boxford, MA. Her print and digital work has appeared in the New YorkTimes Magazine, the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, Eater, Travel + Leisure, Food & Wine, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and elsewhere. Her 2021 Bon Appétit essay, "In My Childhood Kitchen, I Learned Both Fear and Love," is anthologized in the 2022 Best American Food Writing collection, published by HarperCollins and edited by Sohla El-Waylly.
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Dan Nadel
Dan Nadel is the author of Crumb: A Cartoonist's Life (Scribner, April 2025). His previous books include, It’s Life as a I See It: Black Cartoonists in Chicago, 1940–1980; Peter Saul: Professional Artist Correspondence, 1945–1976; and Art Out of Time: Unknown Comic Visionaries, 1900–1969. Nadel has curated exhibitions for galleries and museums internationally including the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, UC Davis, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. He is the founder of PictureBox, a publishing and packaging company that produced over one hundred books, objects, and zines from 2000 to 2014, including the Grammy Award–winning design for Wilco’s 2004 album A Ghost Is Born. Dan is the curator-at-large f
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Brian Anderson
Brian Anderson has been a Webby Award-winning senior features editor, writer, and producer at VICE in New York City (2011-2019). More recently, Anderson did a stint as science editor at The Atlantic (2020), where he was part of the Pulitzer Prize-winning team for early pandemic coverage, and was later a senior editor at Vox (2021-2022).
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His first book, LOUD AND CLEAR: The Grateful Dead’s Wall of Sound and the Quest for Audio Perfection, will be released in June 2025 on St. Martin’s Press. -
Bill Kreutzmann
BILL KREUTZMANN co-founded the Grateful Dead in 1965 with his musical cohorts Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Ron "Pigpen" McKernan, and Phil Lesh. As the drummer in that band for all 30 years until they disbanded in 1995, he performed more than 2,300 concerts and played on every one of their albums. He continues to play music in various bands including Billy and the Kids. He lives on an organic farm in Hawaii.
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Frank Zappa
Frank Vincent Zappa was an American composer, musician, and film director. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa established himself as a prolific and highly distinctive composer, electric guitar player and band leader. He worked in almost every musical genre and wrote music for rock bands, jazz ensembles, synthesizers and symphony orchestra, as well as musique concrète works constructed from pre-recorded, synthesized or sampled sources. In addition to his music recordings, he created feature-length and short films, music videos, and album covers.
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Peter Wolf
Peter Wolf was born in the Bronx, moved to Boston to study painting at the Museum School of Fine Arts then left to pursue a life in music with the J.Geils Band. In 1984, he began his career as a solo artist. Wolf continues to paint, record and tour from his home base, in Boston, Massachusetts.
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Jim Newton
Jim Newton is editor at large of the Los Angeles Times and writes a weekly column for the Op-Ed page on the policy and politics of Southern California.
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Newton came to the Los Angeles Times in 1989, having previously worked as a reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and as a clerk at the New York Times, where he served as columnist James Reston's assistant from 1985-86. He is a graduate of Dartmouth College and the recipient of numerous local and national awards. He was part of the Los Angeles Times' coverage of the Los Angeles riots in 1992 and the earthquake of 1994, both of which were awarded Pulitzer Prizes to the staff.
Newton also is the author of two critically acclaimed, best-selling biographies, "Justice for All: Earl Warren -
Peter Richardson
Peter Richardson has written critically acclaimed books about Hunter S. Thompson, the Grateful Dead, Ramparts magazine, and radical author and editor Carey McWilliams. He is currently completing a book about the first decade of Rolling Stone magazine.
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Richardson's essays have appeared in The Nation, The New Republic, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Review of Books, Literary Hub, Guernica, California History, and many other outlets. Excerpts of his work have appeared in the New York Times, Mother Jones, and Bookforum. A busy book reviewer, Richardson received the National Entertainment Journalism Award for Online Criticism in 2013.
From 2006 to 2023, Richardson taught courses on California culture at San Francisco Sta -
Brian Anderson
Brian Anderson has been a Webby Award-winning senior features editor, writer, and producer at VICE in New York City (2011-2019). More recently, Anderson did a stint as science editor at The Atlantic (2020), where he was part of the Pulitzer Prize-winning team for early pandemic coverage, and was later a senior editor at Vox (2021-2022).
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His first book, LOUD AND CLEAR: The Grateful Dead’s Wall of Sound and the Quest for Audio Perfection, will be released in June 2025 on St. Martin’s Press. -
Robert Hunter
Librarian note: There is more than one author with this name in the Goodreads database.
Buy books on Amazon
This is the “catch-all” profile.
Current authors
Robert^^Hunter American musician, novelist
Robert^^^Hunter ceramics
Robert^^^^Hunter self help/business
Robert Frank Hunter illustrator
Robert^E. Hunter American diplomat
Robert^^E. Hunter American surgeon
Robert N. Hunter road engineer
Robert P. Hunter veterinary drug specialist
Dead authors
Robert C. Hunter lyricist, The Grateful Dead (1941-2019)
Robert Brockie Hunter British physician (1915-1994)
Robert Hancock Hunter, known for memoir (1813-1902)
Robert M.T. Hunter American politician (1809-1887)
Robert^^^^^Hunter Canadian environmentalist; co-founder of Greenpeace (1941-2005)
Robert^^^^^^Hunter American politician and -
Blair Jackson
Blair Jackson is a music journalist and author best known for Garcia: An American Life and Grateful Dead: The Music Never Stopped. He edited 27 issues of The Golden Road fanzine and has contributed to Mix and Electronic Musician. His books include Classic Tracks, exploring iconic rock and soul recordings. A passionate reader of history and music biographies, he shares his insights on Dead.net. He lives in California and is the father of two children.
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Steve Parish
Steve Parish is an acclaimed Australian photographer, naturalist, and publisher whose work has shaped public appreciation of Australia's natural heritage. Born in Great Britain in 1945, he developed a deep love for nature early in life through activities like spearfishing and hunting. At 17, he joined an expedition to Kangaroo Island led by underwater photography pioneer Igo Oak, an experience that ignited his passion for photography and natural history. After joining the Navy at 18, his posting to Jervis Bay allowed him to hone his diving and photography skills, contributing to research for the Australian Museum and resulting in his first book, Oceans of Life.
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In 1985, he founded Steve Parish Publishing, which became a multimillion-dollar e -
Peter Conners
In the mid-80s, Peter Conners submerged into a life of writing, music, and exploration, and he hasn’t looked back since. He has published nine books of nonfiction, fiction, and poetry, and edited dozens of volumes of poetry and prose. His nonfiction books – Cornell ‘77, Growing Up Dead, JAMerica, and White Hand Society — have garnered him a reputation as a leading chronicler of the Grateful Dead, jam band, and countercultural community.
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Conners regularly gives readings and lectures at universities, conferences, bookstores, art galleries, and on panels related to music, counterculture, poetry, fiction, and editing. His books have received reviews in such places as Rolling Stone, Vice, Library Journal, Penthouse, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, Th -
Neal Pollack
Neal Pollack’s first book, The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature, was published in 2000, becoming an (almost) instant cult classic. His debut novel, Never Mind the Pollacks, hit shelves in 2003, and was shamelessly promoted by his band, The Neal Pollack Invasion. In 2007, he published Alternadad, a best-selling memoir. In 2010, Pollack became a certified yoga teacher and published Stretch, a nonfiction account of his adventures in American yoga culture. He has contributed to The New York Times, Wired, Slate, Yoga Journal, and Vanity Fair, among many other publications. Thomas & Mercer published his historical noir novel Jewball in March 2012, and debuted his "yoga detective" novel, Downward-Facing Death, in serialized fiction fo
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Rosie McGee
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I was born Florence Nathan in Paris, France, the daughter of two Parisians who owned a bookstore. When I was five, we emigrated to the U.S. where I entered a San Francisco kindergarten speaking only French.
I started taking photographs when I was 12, about the time I wrote my first short story for an English class.
At 18, I was hired by legendary DJ "Big Daddy" Tom Donahue to work for his Autumn Records and Tempo Productions--it changed my life forever.
If that wasn't enough of a change, I moved in with Grateful Dead bass player Phil Lesh at the band's L.A. home not long after we met in December of 1965.
When we split late in 1969, I remained in the Dead's inner circle as their travel agent, French interpreter, onstage dancing girl and the offi -
Jerry Garcia
Jerome John "Jerry" García was an American musician, songwriter, artist, and lead guitarist and vocalist of the psychedelic rock band the Grateful Dead. García was viewed by many as the leader or "spokesman" of the group.
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Performing with the Grateful Dead for its entire three-decade career (which spanned from 1965 to 1995), García participated in a variety of side projects, including the Jerry García Band, Old and in the Way, the Garcia/Grisman acoustic duo, and Legion of Mary. García co-founded the New Riders of the Purple Sage with John Dawson and David Nelson. He also released several solo albums, and contributed to a number of albums by other artists over the years as a session musician. He was well known by many for his distinctive guit -
Carla Jean Whitley
Carla Jean Whitley is a writer and editor who is curious about the intersection of culture and community. She shares those stories through the written word as well as audio, video, social media, speaking engagements and teaching. She is a freelance writer whose work frequently appears in BookPage, Lonely Planet, Birmingham magazine and other publications. Whitley is the author of three books: “Birmingham Beer: A Heady History of Brewing in the Magic City,” “Muscle Shoals Sound Studio: How the Swampers Changed American Music” and “Balancing Act: Yoga Essays.” Connect with her at carlajeanwhitley.com.
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