John McMillan at Decatur Library

Historian John McMillan joins us with a fascinating new look back at the ’60s: "Smoking Typewriters: The Sixties Underground Press and the Rise of Alternative Media in America."  The book, published by Oxford University Press, is a "compact, sharply etched, tour-de-force recollection of rebellious young journalists"who stormed the barriers of the mainstream media and forever changed American journalism and publishing.  It’s a well researched and audacious examination of the many counterculture weeklies that popped up in the era of Vietnam, drugs and rock and which laid the foundation for today’s seemingly limitless alternative journals.  Copies of the book will be available for sale and signing by the author.