Ken Elton Kesey was an American novelist, essayist and countercultural figure. He considered himself a link between the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the hippies of the 1960s.
Neal Leon Cassady was a major figure of the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the psychedelic and counterculture movements of the 1960s.
Larry Jeff McMurtry was an American novelist, essayist, and screenwriter whose work was predominantly set in either the Old West or contemporary Texas. His novels included Horseman, Pass By (1962), The Last Picture Show (1966), and Terms of Endearment (1975), which were adapted into films. Films adapted from McMurtry's works earned 34 Oscar nominations. He was also a prominent book collector and bookseller.
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is a 1968 nonfiction book by Tom Wolfe written in the New Journalism literary style. By 1970, this style began to be referred to as Gonzo Journalism, a term coined for the work of Hunter S. Thompson. The book presents a firsthand account of the experiences of Ken Kesey and a group of psychedelic enthusiasts, known as the Merry Pranksters, who traveled across the United States in a colorfully-painted school bus they called Furthur. Kesey and the Pranksters became famous for their use of psychedelic drugs to achieve expansion of their consciousness. The book chronicles the Acid Tests and encounters with notable figures of the time, and describes Kesey's exile to Mexico and his arrests.
The Merry Pranksters were followers of American author Ken Kesey. Kesey and the Merry Pranksters lived communally at Kesey's homes in California and Oregon, and are noted for the sociological significance of a lengthy road trip they took in the summer of 1964, traveling across the United States in a psychedelic painted school bus called Furthur, organizing parties, and giving out LSD. During this time they met many of the guiding lights of the 1960s cultural movement and presaged what are commonly thought of as hippies with odd behavior, tie-dyed and red, white, and blue clothing, and renunciation of normal society, which they dubbed The Establishment. Tom Wolfe chronicled their early escapades in his 1968 book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, and documents a 1966 trip on Furthur from Mexico through Houston, stopping to visit Kesey's friend the novelist Larry McMurtry. Kesey was in flight from a drug charge at the time.
Furthur is a 1939 International Harvester school bus purchased by author Ken Kesey in 1964 to carry his "Merry Band of Pranksters" cross-country, filming their counterculture adventures as they went. The bus featured prominently in Tom Wolfe's 1968 book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test but, due to the chaos of the trip and editing difficulties, footage of the journey was not released as a film until the 2011 documentary Magic Trip.
Hotel Rwanda is a 2004 docudrama film co-written and directed by Terry George. It was adapted from a screenplay by George and Keir Pearson, and stars Don Cheadle and Sophie Okonedo as hotelier Paul Rusesabagina and his wife Tatiana. Based on the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, which occurred during the spring of 1994, the film documents Rusesabagina's efforts to save the lives of his family and more than 1,000 other refugees by providing them with shelter in the besieged Hôtel des Mille Collines. Hotel Rwanda explores genocide, political corruption, and the repercussions of violence.
George Saunders is an American writer of short stories, essays, novellas, children's books, and novels. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, McSweeney's, and GQ. He also contributed a weekly column, "American Psyche", to The Guardian's weekend magazine between 2006 and 2008.
Margaret Marshall Saunders CBE was a prolific Canadian writer of children's stories and romance novels, a lecturer, and an animal rights advocate. She was an active member of the Local Council of Women of Halifax.
Pawn Hearts is the fourth album by English progressive rock band Van der Graaf Generator, released on 12 November 1971 on Charisma Records. The original album features just three tracks, including the side-long suite "A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers". The album was not commercially successful in the UK, but reached number one in Italy. It has since seen retrospective critical praise and was reissued on CD in 2005 with extra material.
Phil Jimenez is an American comics artist and writer known for his work as writer/artist on Wonder Woman from 2000 to 2003, as one of the five pencilers of the 2005–2006 miniseries Infinite Crisis, his collaborations with writer Grant Morrison on New X-Men and The Invisibles, and his artistry for his 2021 critically acclaimed partnership with writer Kelly Sue DeConnick on Wonder Woman Historia: The Amazons.
Charles Robert Saunders was an African-American author and journalist, a pioneer of the "sword and soul" literary genre with his Imaro novels. During his long career, he wrote novels, non-fiction, screenplays and radio plays.
Sailor Song is a 1992 novel written by Ken Kesey. The only work of long fiction solely written by Kesey after Sometimes a Great Notion (1964), Sailor Song depicts the lives of the residents of Kuinak, a small town in Alaska, thirty years in the future – the 2020s.
Jonathan "Junior" Juniper is a fictional character appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. Created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, his first appearance was in Sgt. Fury and the Howling Commandos vol. 1 #1. He is known to be the first major character death in a Marvel comic and the only Howling Commando ever to die in battle.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is a 1975 American psychological drama film directed by Miloš Forman, based on the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey. The film stars Jack Nicholson as a new patient at a mental institution, alongside Louise Fletcher as a sadistic nurse. The supporting cast is Will Sampson, Danny DeVito, Sydney Lassick, William Redfield, and the film debuts of Christopher Lloyd and Brad Dourif.
The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better is a book by Richard G. Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, published in 2009 by Allen Lane. The book is published in the US by Bloomsbury Press with the new sub-title: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger. It was then published in a paperback second edition in November 2010 by Penguin Books with the subtitle, Why Equality is Better for Everyone.
Deogratias: A Tale of Rwanda is a graphic novel written and drawn by Jean-Philippe Stassen, published by First Second Books.
Pastoralia is short story writer George Saunders’s second full-length short story collection, published in 2000. The collection received highly positive reviews from book critics and was ranked the fifth-greatest book of the 2000s by literary magazine The Millions. The book consists of stories that appeared in The New Yorker; most of the stories were O. Henry Prize Stories. The collection was a New York Times Notable Book for 2001.
Redeployment is a collection of short stories by American writer Phil Klay. His first published book, it won the 2014 National Book Award for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle's 2014 John Leonard Award given for a best first book in any genre.
"Sometimes You Just Can't Win" is a song by American country singer George Jones. It was written by Smokey Stover.
