The Birth of Destructo-Mania

You couldn't ask for a more perfect metaphor: the tunnels are a labyrinth-a great seething subconscious-affording a clandestine access to key places and buildings throughout the town-as the forces of the underground break through the thin crust of a complacent America.

-Brian Spaeth, from the Introduction

Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, in the 1960s: steam tunnels under the campus, garage bands, glue parties, the first LSD in town, an underground high-school newspaper, and a generation war at the kitchen table. Steven Hager's stories of growing up in the sixties, from his Tin Whistle blog, are interspersed with the fiction he wrote at the time-beginning with "The Steam Tunnels," his first serious short story-along with his art, his cartoons, and two complete scripts, Rose's Boarding House and The Runaways.

Inside: the Finchley Boys and the Knight Riders, the Magic Hat, a race riot at Urbana High, a first trip on LSD and a first trip to the Haight, MacBird! and the anti-war protests, Paul Tyner and Saul Alinsky, and a flight from the draft to Sweden that produced "The Stockholm Manifesto." The book closes with pages from all five 1968 issues of The Tin Whistle, the underground newspaper Hager published while still in high school, reproduced from the originals.

Steven Hager was editor-in-chief of High Times from 1988 to 2013, where he created the Cannabis Cup. He was the first journalist to cover hip hop culture extensively, created the story that became the film Beat Street, and chronicled the 1980s East Village art scene of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring and Kenny Scharf. He is a filmmaker, author and lyricist, and still writes songs and essays on the history of alternative culture.