2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl

The acclaimed metaphysical epic that binds together the cosmological phenomena of our time, ranging from crop circles to quantum theory to the resurgence of psychedelic drugs, to support the contention of the Mayan calendar that the year 2012 portends a global shift-in consciousness, culture, and way of living-of unprecedented consequence.Read Daniel Pinchbeck's posts on the Penguin Blog

About the Author :
Author Daniel Pinchbeck has deep personal roots in the New York counterculture of the 1950s and 1960s. His father was an abstract painter, and his mother, Joyce Johnson, was a member of the Beat Generation and dated Jack Kerouac as On the Road hit the bestseller lists in 1957 (chronicled in Johnson's bestselling book, Minor Characters: A Beat Memoir). Pinchbeck was a founder of the 1990s literary magazine Open City with fellow writers Thomas Beller and Robert Bingham. He has written for many publications, including Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, The Village Voice, and Rolling Stone. In 1994, he was chosen by The New York Times Magazine as one of "Thirty Under Thirty" destined to change our culture. Pinchbeck lives in New York's East Village, where he is editorial directory of Reality Sandwich (www.realitysandwich.com). He writes a column, Prophet Motive, for Conscious Enlightment publishing (www.cemagazines.com), which appears in Conscious Choice (Chicago), Conscious Choice (Seattle), Whole Life Times (LA), and Common Ground (SF).

Review :
"Pinchbeck's exotic epic is a paradigm-buster capable of forcing the most cynical reader outside her comfort zone." "Daniel Pinchbeck ... is rapidly becoming our generation's foremost proponent of controlled psychedelic experimentation." "Pinchbeck ... has created a scene around him that is perhaps the youngest and most vibrant of the current psychedelic establishment." "It's a ride worth taking, partly for the wild entertainment value but also because the book is a document with genuine sociopolitical relevance.... 2012 is more interesting than the typical doom-laden environmental policy document because Pinchbeck delivers his eco-political message in the form of a syncretic mad masterpiece." "Daniel Pinchbeck has done a lot of psychedelics, and he's here again to tell us about those trips and the resulting dreams, daemons, and synchronicities, as well as the forthcoming 'global decimation' that might be avoided if people began 'confronting their habitual mechanisms of avoidance and denial, overcoming their fear and conditioned cynicism.'" "In 2012, his part memoir, part anthropological journey through many things spiritual, metaphysical, and just plain eerie, Pinchbeck illuminates not the world's end but the many ways in which our social structures are disintegrating.... Into 2012 Pinchbeck fits Jung, crop circles, Martin Heidegger's critique of technology, the ecological theories of Rudolf Steiner, the parables of Christ, Jared Diamond's Collapse, and even the confessions of Whitley Strieber.... I am by nature suspicious of such books, but 2012 was for me both a relief and a box of treasures."