So Many Roads: The Life and Times of the Grateful Dead

The Grateful Dead's long, strange trip has been the subject of countless books--but none like So Many Roads. Drawing on new interviews with surviving members and people in their inner circle along with previously unknown details gleaned from the group's extensive archives, David Browne, acclaimed music journalist and contributing editor at Rolling Stone, lends the Dead's epic story the vivid feel of a novel. He sheds new light on the band's beginnings, music, dynamics, and struggles since Jerry Garcia's death in 1995. No longer dismissed as relics of the hippie era, a new generation has lionized the Dead for creating a culture that paved the way for social networking, free music swapping, and the uncompromising anti-corporate attitude of indie rock. Now, fifty years after the band first began changing rock 'n' roll--both sonically and psychically--So Many Roads paints the most vivid portrait yet of the Grateful Dead, one of the most enduring institutions in American music and culture.

About the Author :
David Browne is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone and Men's Journal and the author of several books on musicians and groups, including the Beatles, the Grateful Dead, Sonic Youth, and Jeff and Tim Buckley, among others. Sean Runnette, an Earphones Award-winning narrator, has also directed and produced more than two hundred audiobooks, including several Audie Award winners. His television and film appearances include Two If by Sea, Cop Land, Sex and the City, Law & Order, the award-winning film Easter, and numerous commercials.

Review :
"David Browne has come up with a completely unique way of telling the Grateful Dead's story, deftly moving back and forth through time from various chronological pivot points, weaving the intricate tale the way the Dead would open up, explore, and close a great '72 'Playing in the Band.' It's filled with little (and a few big) things I didn't know, and his evocative prose really brings out the band members' personalities in a way that few books have." -- "Blair Jackson, author of Garcia" "I'm a well-read Deadhead, and I learned new things even about shows I was at. (Englishtown, New Jersey, 9/3/77!) Browne braids tales of America's greatest rock band like melody lines in a primo jam, tangents looping back to the narrative, always pulling it forward. It's a wild, beautiful ride." -- "Will Hermes, author of Love Goes to Buildings on Fire" "Righteous testimonial to the anarchic goodness that was the Grateful Dead...While the author doesn't shy away from the band's pharmaceutical inventory, neither does he let that get in the way of his assessment of the music...Fittingly, half of the book is devoted to the first ten years of the band. Just as fittingly, the second half takes the Dead from ragged band of hippies to post-'60s corporation...He also appropriately places emphasis on things other biographers have overlooked...One of the better books on the band and welcome reading in this fiftieth anniversary year." -- "KIrkus Reviews" "The Grateful Dead are as classically American as Count Basie and Frank Sinatra, and David Browne has written the ultimate book about them: interviewing everyone and bringing us into their lives in the changing decades through which this quintessentially '60s band miraculously increased its mythos, stardom, and relevance. Legendary music gives our world back to us, and specific people, coming together as bands, give us the music that gives us that world. With his wise assessments, ace reporting, and close and long lenses, Browne gives us that world and those men." -- "Shelia Weller, New York Times bestselling author of Girls Like Us" "The Grateful Dead have entered the realm of myth. The triumph of So Many Roads is animating both the music and the musicians into something very real indeed." -- "Alan Paul, New York Times bestselling author of One Way Out"