Free Press: Underground & Alternative Publications, 1965-1975 - Softcover

This nostalgic tour-de-force celebrates the alternative newspapers that forever influenced culture, politics, and society. Taking the collective name from the wartime "underground press" of Europe's anti-Nazi resistance, the rebellious countercultural publications examined here were all members of the Underground Press Syndicate (later renamed the Alternative Press Syndicate), which was founded in 1967 so that member papers could freely share material. This utopian model perfectly suited the times. The work of soon to be famous writers and artists such as Hunter S. Thompson, T. Coraghessan Boyle, Ken Kesey, R. Crumb, and Art Spiegelman was soon widely available from coast to coast.
An outgrowth of the global youth movement, the underground press documented everything from politics and art to film and fashion -with a sizeable leavening of sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll. Among the featured publications are The Los Angeles Free Press (persecuted by the Nixon-era FBI for its antiwar views), The East Village Other (the first to adopt a psychedelic layout), Interview (founded by Andy Warhol and the first to feature homoerotic imagery), The Berkeley Barb (famous for one cover showing a young man with a chain around his mind), The San Francisco Oracle (which featured the writing of Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti), and Fifth Estate (which coined the phrase "all isms are was-isms").