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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 introduced the Book Nook author interview program for WYSO in 1994. Over the years he has produced more than 1500 interviews with writers, musicians, poets, politicians, and celebrities. Listen to the Book Nook with Vick Mickunas for intimate conversations about books with the writers who create them. Vick Mickunas reviews books for the Dayton Daily News and the Springfield News Sun.