Customer Reviews

Grateful Dead: The Illustrated Trip

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

What can you say about an illustrated book about the Dead? It's fun, disjointed, fragmentary, but it fits perfectly with the Dead and their style of living and music-making. In the usual Dorling Kindersly style, this book contains lots of sidebars with illustrations all over the place. There's no narrative, other than time itself. The timeline, that is the thread through this book, moves from the earliest days to Jerry's death and beyond, covering the albums, important concerts, drug busts and all the other highlights of the Dead's career. If you are, or ever have been, a Deadhead, you'll want this book to leaf through while listening to live Dead shows.

It is really a wonderful book. Clever, well written, and full of trivia and history organized chronologically. The forward by Robert Hunter is a special treat. The photos are varied and delightful, evoking images of a very special time and place. True, it is a little light on some of the less attractive parts of the history, but that seems OK in a book like this. And the photos are generally too small to do them justice, but they make up for the size in quantity. What is there is choice and makes for hours of fascinating reading. Just the thing to be enjoyed on a cold winter's evening with Europe 72 on the stereo and a hot drink in your hand. On balance, it is one of the few "must have" books for a Deadhead.

This is a Large, Thick and Heavy Book.
Based on a Timeline that begins in 1940 and ends in 2003, this is Quite a Feast for the eyes. If you are New to the Music of The Grateful Dead and have never seen one of the other Hundreds of Books about The Band, this will fill you in on THOUSANDS of Details. If this Book was used as a Guide to bring you into the World that is The Grateful Dead, well... just be prepared to be Busy for a While.

For the Seasoned Head, lot's of this Information has been Covered elsewhere in the Past. But at the Same Time, here is just about everything there is all in One Place. The Visuals herein are Quite a Trip for your Head, and they are as much the Stars of this Massive Volume as the Twenty Tons of Dead Story contained within 480 Pages.

To sum it up...When they begin teaching: "Grateful Dead 101" at UC Berkeley, this will be the Textbook!
FIVE STARS !!!

This huge (480 pgs.) and interesting compendium of photos, stories, mini-bio's, art, comments, and multi-decade chronology is much more than another Deadhead encyclopedia of set lists and arcane trivia. By setting the Grateful Dead's story in the context of a much larger historical timeline, it pulls it all together - both for those of us who were/are there, and also for those who always wondered what the fuss was all about. It gives credence to what we've known all along .... that all of us who've consciously participated in this wonderful story are not just a band-loving fringe of weirdo's living on the edge of society. It's a beautifully-conceived book, lovingly executed with taste; and as a photographer who contributed to this book, I particularly appreciate the quality of the design and printing.

this is easily one of the most beautiful books I've ever seen. I gave two as Christmas gifts and just came back to get one for myself.
I gave one to a serious Dead fan and one to a lifelong music lover and both were totally blown away.

It's probably not fair of me to review this book yet, since it's going to take me at least another month to get through it! Seriously, this is really something. Photos from all eras, including a bunch I'd enver seen from the old Warlocks days, great overviews of all the albums, key songs and players and just about anything else you can think of is in this monster. I plan on playing the tapes of all the shows I went to as background music while I read it from cover to cover, but I think the tapes will run out before the book does. Great work.

Not being a deadhead myself, I can say the person who received this as a gift absolutely loved it. I looked at many other books about the Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia, but settled on this one, and was glad I did. Great pictures and historical information about the dead ( from a non-dead head ).

Any Deadhead, serious or casual will find a ton of stuff to pique their interest here. There are treasure troves of interesting factoids in here. For me, it was very interesting to look over so many of the shows I saw and find out things I didn't know and things I did....bringing back many fond memories. So many little tidbits in here are bound to make you smile, laugh, and maybe even cry. Even the most hardcore fan will find a lot of new imformation in here. The only complaint I could possibly have is this is a big and heavy book...not exactly one to take on the subway with you. GET IT.

Very happy with purchase of book. Bookseller had great customer service, and very prompt delivery. Book is very informative and entertaining, filled with lots of great photos and behind the scene stories.

I was very pleased with being able to find exactly what i wanted for an excellent price. The book was in great condition and my fiance couldn't have been more excited about it. She had one she just adored and it was stolen and when she received this one she was so very excited about the condition of the product. thanks Amazon for making a birthday very special.