Released in 1970, Workingman-s Dead was the breakthrough album for the Grateful Dead, a cold-water-shock departure from the Acid Test madness of the late -60s. It was the band-s most commercially and critically successful release to date. More importantly, these songs established the blueprint for how the Dead would maintain and build upon a community held together by the core motivation of rejecting the status quo - the -straight life- - in order to live and work on their own terms. As a unified whole, the album-s eight songs serve as points of entry into a fully-rendered portrait of the Grateful Dead within the context of late twentieth-century American history. These songs speak to the attendant cultural and political anxieties that resulted from the idealism of the -60s giving way to the uncomfortable realities of the -70s, and the band-s evolving perspective on these changes. Based on research, interviews, and personal experience, this book probes the paradox at the heart o
