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Book Nook: 'Heads Together: Weed and the Underground Press Syndicate, 1965-1973' by David Jacob Kramer

 "Heads Together- Weed and the Underground Press Syndicate, 1965-1973" by David Jacob Kramer.

David Jacob Kramer's book "Heads Together" tells the story of the Underground Press Syndicate, a network of underground newspapers that flourished in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Have you ever heard of the Underground Press Syndicate? I had not until I read this book. I do remember underground newspapers. We had one in Des Moines, Feast of Fools. I remember one from Grinnell they called Pterodactyl. We would occasionally see copies of the Chicago Seed. My favorite underground newspaper of the late 1960s came out of Des Moines. It was called "Radio Thrills Monthly" and it was published by the much beloved free form radio station KFMG-FM. It had cartoons by Scott Ross, a genius right up there with Gilbert Sheldon, or even Robert Crumb, at least in my comic book.

David Jacob Kramer's obsessively fascinating opus Heads Together: Weed and the Underground Press Syndicate, 1965-1973 totally blew me away. As they used to say back in the day, I be tripping on it. Wow, what a collection of underground newspapers and his history of the Underground Press Syndicate is enthralling and truly a slice of time that only lasted a few years before all that innocence got lost.

The Book Nook on WYSO is presented by the Greene County Public Library with additional support from Washington-Centerville Public LibraryClark County Public LibraryDayton Metro LibraryWright Memorial Public Library, and Tipp City Public.

Vick Mickunas is the host of Book Nook on WYSO, which he created in 1994. He has conducted more than 1,700 author interviews, from Studs Terkel to Lee Child to John Glenn. He is a book critic for the Dayton Daily News and the Springfield News-Sun.