A fascinating book for anyone interested in science, history, anthropology, or drugs! The history of scientific research around LSD, psilocybin, and other psychedelics is far wilder than I ever imagined. While this book can get a bit dense around certain scientific and historic aspects, it's mostly very approachable. Come for the informative nonfiction. Stay for the bisexual icons and high dolphins.

Real Rating: 3.5* of five

What a complete clusterfuck the right wingnuts made of the 20th century. There were glimmers of a better, more open world that could have been...then the generals and religious nuts got hold of it, and choked it into the pale, selfish idiocy of the New Age.

What did not work for me was the sense that Mead and Bateson were ciphers...what about them made them worth setting at the center of a book, I do not know, because it felt like they were not there. The research, and its aims, are very interesting. The opponents to the use of this research are more carefully, and luckily damningly, limned than the people whose names are on the jacket.

Interesting story with a weird hollow at its core, yet still worth reading for the facts you are very likely not to have known before regarding the US attitudes towards psychedelic drugs and their theraputic uses. A story steeped in tragedy for cures and benefits lost.

This is such an interesting read. Breen writes with such a specific point of view, and I would be curious to read his other work in the future.

Fascinating account of psychedelics before they were even called psychedelics. Margaret Mead, the OSS/CIA and the Cold War, dolphins, Ginsberg and Leary, Esalen, peyote, mescaline, psylocybin, LSD - everything you ever wanted to know (it's right there in the title).

Mead's "we can be better" approach to science contrasted with the next generation's introspective and, um, less than "global" perspective brought conflict to the arena and made for very interesting reading. We can all wonder "what if"...if things had gone a little different, if the science had evolved down a different (Mead's) path, what world would we be living in today?

My thanks to NetGalley and Grand Central Publishing for the ARC.

Thanks to the publisher for early access to this book. An insightful look into the origins (and founders) of the psychedelic movement. A great read for those who enjoy writers like Michael Pollan.

Psychedelics have been more in the public consciousness, as they should be. I appreciated learning more about the history.

Tripping on Utopia is a fascinating book about history of psychedelics. I learned a lot about Margaret Mead, Gregory Bateson, Allen Ginsberg, and Timothy Leary and their contributions. I would've liked a bit more detail written about the experiments to understand the impacts.

This review is going to be a choose your own adventure! You pick up Tripping on Utopia by Benjamin Breen and then....

Path 1: You are a reader who loves science, medicine, philosophy, and you know who Margaret Mead, Gregory Bateson, Allen Ginsberg, and Timothy Leary are. You know what MKUltra is and you want to know more about all these subjects. This book is perfectly suited for you. It is very well written and you will probably give it 5 stars.

Path 2: You are like me. You've heard the names listed above before but know next to nothing about them other than that they did....something. MKUltra is about LSD and the government made some people lose their minds right? And you'd go to jail if you pulled any of this nonsense nowadays. You will recognize this book is very well written but you can't connect with the characters. Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson's backgrounds feel too rushed for you to feel connected to them. Other characters seem to dip in and out of the narrative. The actual experiments need more detail to fully understand their impact. You give the book 3 stars because you can tell the author knows what he is talking about, but there is just enough missing from the narrative that you can't get into it.

Path 3: You are actually me and need to rate this book. You choose 4 stars. It's not Breen's fault you don't love science. He's certainly a talented writer and that alone deserves more than 3 stars doesn't it? Plus, some of the stories about tripping are pretty cool. You click 4 stars and you go to bed.

(This book was provided as an advance copy by Netgalley and Grand Central Publishing.)

My thanks to both NetGalley and the publisher Grand Central Publishing for an advance copy of this book that takes a new look at the history of psychedelic s in America, both in study and in use and where things started to go wrong, hindering research and acceptance for decades.

There have been quite a few books, Michael Pollan's How to Change Your Mind, Johann Hari's Lost Connections and Psychedelics by Professor David Nutt of England, that look at the treament of mental issues with drugs that have been banned since the 60's. Psychedelics have been demonized by both the press, for readership and or clicks, and government and religious groups for the expanded mind that might follow. There are risks of course, but both risks and benefits have been stymied be the fact that these drugs have been banned almost all over ther world, making research difficult if not impossible. Explaining to donors, hey I want to have people try LSD for depression, or for PTSD, well that is a way to lose funding in a few simple words. This wasn't always the case. Before the turn on, tune in drop out crowd pretty much ruined everything, psychedelics were used in treatment by lots of people, and by governments on lots of people without their permission. And some of this had been going on for years, before the summer of love was even a thought. Tripping on Utopia: Margaret Mead, the Cold War, and the Troubled Birth of Psychedelic Science, by writer and historian Benjamin Breen is a look at the efforts or post-war intellectuals to try and bring a change of mind to the people of the world, some for good, and some in the interest of patriotism and of course, as William S. Burroughs always said, control.

The book begins with a look at psychedelic studies by focusing first on the efforts of two anthropologists, before the rise of the beats, hippies and Timothy Leary. Margaret Mead was a woman very sure of herself, who lived life the way she wanted it. Gregory Bateson was English, and had already lost two brothers, one to war, another to suicide, when he and Mead crossed paths doing research, and fell in love. World War II changed both of them. Mead wanting to try and find away to open people's mind to the world around them, and changing the eventual destruction she saw. Bateson was more pessimistic after his wartime work for the OSS. Bateson saw that the next war was going to not just physical, but mental, and that a new organization would be needed to deal with both propaganda, but the battle for the hearts and minds. This was fine with the government who was actively seeking ways to influence spies, soldiers, and citizens, even in their own country. This led to a rise of interest in LSD, mescaline and other drugs, for solutions to both the cold war, and for what the cold war was doing to the people.

A very different history on psychedelic history, going back much further than most books do. I knew that Margaret Mead had some influence in a lot of mind altering works, but I knew nothing about her husband Gregory Bateson, nor many of the other artists named in the book. Breen has written a fascinating history, about the post-war world, science, espionage, and the arts, with dips into the weirder world of dolphin's being doses with LSD, the MK-Ultra program, and even Cary Grant. Breen is very good at explaining things, from Mead's work in New Guinea, to post-war relations, to the various intellectual groups that arose around these people. A very solid history and a new way of looking at where things started to go wrong.

Recommended for people interested in the lesser known history of the United States, the drug war, and why psychedelics became so demonized. I can't imagine a time where one could watch a person on a drug trip on regular tv, which is documented in this book. A very interesting history of dark time in the American psyche, which has sadly only become worse.

Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for giving me a free eARC of this book to read in exchange for my review!