Grateful Dead: The Illustrated Trip
A behemoth of a book,Grateful Dead: The Illustrated Tripisn't cheap (especially thelimited-edition slipcase edition). ButGrateful Deaddevotees should think in terms of its per-pound price. Tipping the scales at over 15 pounds, it's priced more like hamburger than steak. Make no mistake, however--this is a porterhouse of a book. Weighty, lushly illustrated, and thorough, the collaboration (spearheaded by longtime band publicist Dennis McNally and stalwart Dead chronicler Blair Jackson, among others) is constructed around an annotated timeline that runs from the 1940 birth of the band's oldest member,Phil Lesh, (the following notation concerns the assassination of Leon Trotsky) through the Dead comeback shows of the summer of 2003. Striving to capture the tenor of the times as well as the development of the group, vignettes capture seemingly everyone and everything that came into the orbit ofJerry Garciaand company, from the rise of the underground press through the links between the Dead and hip-hop nations (which pretty much begin and end with a shared affection for weed). Great fun to scan and visually dizzying (thanks to more than 2,000 photos and other pieces of artwork), this is the Dead coffee table book to end all Dead coffee table books.--Steven Stolder