Jay Karl Stevens (November 11, 1953 – February 19, 2025)"Jay Karl Stevens". Obituary. Valley News, Lebanon, New Hampshire. March 13, 2025. Retrieved March 17, 2025. was a freelance writer and social historian.Cohen, Richard (1998). "Stevens, Jay (Karl) 195(?)–". In Peacock, Scot; Rooney, Terrie M. (ed). Contemporary Authors. 166. Gale. pp. 378-379. . . Stevens was born and raised into a family of farmers in Springfield, Vermont. He attended school there as a child and then Kimball Union Academy in New Hampshire, going on to the University of Vermont after graduation.
He is the author of Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream (1987), which has been described as a "classic" by historian David FarberFarber, David (Spring 2006). "Can't Find My Way: America in the Great Stoned Age, 1945-2000." The Historian. 68 (1): 169. and "the quintessential work on the history of LSD in America" by Kristin Robinson.Robinson, Kristin (July 1988). "Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream". Humanist. 48 (4): 40. Strassman, Rick J. (March 1989). "Acid Dreams: The CIA, LSD, and the Sixties Rebellion; Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream". The American Journal of Psychiatry. American Psychiatric Association. 146 (3): 395–396. Historian of science and medicine Benjamin Breen also recommends the book for those wishing to learn more about the history of LSD.Breen, Benjamin (2024). Tripping on Utopia: Margaret Mead, the Cold War, and the Troubled Birth of Psychedelic Science. Grand Central Publishing. . . Quote: "A Note on Sources...For further reading on the history of LSD in particular, see Martin A. Lee and Bruce Shlain, Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD (New York: Grove Press, 1992); and Jay Stevens, Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1987)."
Stevens is also the co-author of Drumming at the Edge of Magic with Grateful Dead percussionist Mickey Hart and ethnomusicologist Fredric Lieberman. He founded Applied Orphics, a digital marketing and distribution company, and Rap Lab, a program bringing at-risk teenagers and professional musicians and poets together.Rap Music Used in Court Diversion Program by Jane Lindholm and Matt Bushlow for Vermont Public Radio Prior to his death, he was living at his family farm in Weathersfield Bow, Vermont, where he produced maple syrup.
Selected works Books Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream (1987) Drumming at the Edge of Magic (with Mickey Hart & Fredric Lieberman) (1990) Planet Drum: A Celebration of Percussion and Rhythm (with Mickey Hart & Fredric Lieberman) (1991) The Sixties edited by Peter Stine, Jay Stevens contributor. Wayne State University Press (January 1, 1996) ,
Discography Dance House by Jay Stevens and Derek Young (2012) Orphic Revival by Jay Karl Stevens and The Raven (2013)
Articles "Keeper of the Vermont Character" Yankee Magazine (March, 1992).
References
Further reading Stevens, Jay (1991). "Introduction". In Whitmer, Peter O., and Van Wyngarden, Bruce. Aquarius Revisited: Seven Who Created the Sixties Counterculture That Changed America. Citadel Press. . .
External links Video about Rap Lab and audio clip in Vermont Life