Following are testimonial blurbs written for Notes From the Underground.
“Thorne Dreyer’s Notes from the Underground should be required reading for everyone under 70. For nearly six decades, he’s chronicled the churn of politics and the counterculture with a special talent for on-the-scene accuracy leavened with irony, humor, and an appealing warmth. Academic historians like Robert Caro and Stephen Ambrose haven’t walked in Dreyer’s well-worn shoes, getting punched in the neck at a demonstration and narrowly avoiding KKK bombings, bullets, and a crossbow arrow. Read this book because Thorne Dreyer was an active eyewitness to the civil rights and antiwar struggles. Read this book because it’s important to consider an honest and incisive alternative to the network evening news. Read this book because it’ll set your chickens free!”
— Thomas Zigal, author ofMany Rivers to Cross andThe White League
“Thorne Dreyer is a legend in his own time and place, which could easily be called an Austin, Texas, that no longer exists. The State Capital that was also the hippie capital, the Berkeley (or Madison, Wisconsin), of the Southwest, famous for its dope, music and political resistance. As we are reminded in this fascinating book, political activists around SDS created The Rag in 1966, one of the first and definitely the best of the underground newspapers. It set the pace for hundreds of other local papers, both in its style and hard-hitting political coverage. The Rag, with Thorne usually at the center, transformed the university, ardently fought against the Vietnam War, and for every good cause. Transformed to a radio version, The Rag lives on….and so does Thorne! Buy this book and learn about a history we need today.”
— Paul Buhle was the founder of the SDS magazine RADICAL AMERICA in 1967. He has edited more than 20 radical history graphic novels and is a retired Senior Lecturer at Brown University.
“No 1960s historian can write authoritatively, authentically, about one of the most transformative decades in U.S. history without probing the incredibly informative essays, articles, reporting, and “think-pieces” of the legendary newspapers of the underground press. No counterculture medium better expressed the ideals and values of a generation in revolt, as the papers were unequivocally and unapologetically publications of passion and personal, immersed reporting. Editors and reporters were enthusiastic participants in the culture, society, and politics they were covering. One such individual was Austin’s Thorne Dreyer, an editor/co-founder of the legendary Austin Rag and Houston’s Space City!, two of the 1960s’ seminal undergrounders. Dreyer has now provided us with a wonderful compendium of his personal essays, covering a wide variety of topics, compiled over decades of his work as an underground journalist. His Notes From the Underground will undoubtedly become a go-to, must resource for anyone wanting a close-up, personal view and clearer understanding of the pivotal moments of an era whose aspirations and spirit still reverberate with many of us.”
— John A. Moretta is a professor of 19th and 20th century U.S. history; he is the author of The Hippies: A 1960s History.
One of the most memorable aspects of 1960s protest was the wide variety of people who jumped in to participate. Thorne Dreyer’s book Notes from the Underground allows us to jump back in. I knew many of the characters in Notes personally and many I did not. All appear in these pages possessed of that same verve and non-sectarian leadership I wish was part of today’s leftie social protest. Given Thorne’s position as editor of The Rag Blog, I’m not surprised that the publication appears frequently in these pages — but there is also so much more — from the Weather Underground to the peace movement, from Austin, Texas, to New York City, from Kinky Friedman’s Jewboys to beat musician David Amram to me. And yes, more male than female or gendered writers appear — so typical of that age. I encourage anyone who has an interest in the 1960s and beyond to read and enjoy Notes From the Underground. I certainly did.
— Judy Gumbo was a founder of the Yippies. She is the author of Yippie Girl.
Thorne Dreyer’s new book, Notes from the Underground, is exactly captured by its subtitle, 77 Articles that Bring the Past to Life. If you know Thorne, you know exactly what “The Past” means, a magical collage of colorful stories and sparkling summaries of radical culture and politics centered in Texas and spanning the decades from the mid-1960s to the present day. Also if you know Thorne, you know why “centered in Texas” is a good phrase. While much of it’s about The Rag in Austin and Space City! in Houston, Thorne didn’t always stay put. We hear his tales from Haight Ashbury in the Summer of Love, of New York City’s Liberation News Service and its remarkable “underground press” efforts amidst the Big Apple’s factional battles of the 1970s. You’ll hear his talks with Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda, along with Kinky Friedman, Alice Embree and Jim Hightower. You can take it in one gulp or in morsels—either way, it’s a treat.
— Carl Davidson, Pioneering Sixties activist, LeftLinks editor.
Aptly titled, Notes From the Underground offers 77 brilliant articles, essays, and interviews conducted by Thorne Dreyer, who for six decades has helped to kindle a vitally needed spark of resistance in these United States. Co-founder of The Rag and Space City! — famed underground newspapers situated deep in the heart of Texas — an editor at Liberation News Service, and most recently, one of the architects of The Rag Blog and Rag Radio, Dreyer has been a leading progressive, no, radical voice contesting inequities, injustices, and immoralities spawned by the well-connected and powerful. Here, he deftly braids strands — countercultural, New Left-oriented, civil rights-related, civil libertarian, and sexual — from the Movement of the 1960s and left-of-center crusades thereafter. Included are explorations of protests, street actions, resulting repression, the New Politics of the later Movement years, looking backward through present battles, incidents dear to native-Houstonian Dreyer, a vast array of progressive figures ranging from a young Judy Collins to Senator Bernie Sanders, and bittersweet remembrances of compatriots lost along the way. Notes from the Underground underscores the indispensable nature of Dreyer’s lifetime of work and why it deserves to be considered alongside that of John Reed, Dwight Macdonald, and I.F. Stone.
— Robert C. Cottrell, author of All-American Rebels: The American Left from the Wobblies to Today, as well as biographies of Reed and Stone.
