The Time and Life Acid Trip

Alan Brinkley's comprehensive new biography of Time magazine co-founder Henry R. Luce, The Publisher: Henry Luce and His American Century, has but one flaw. Then again, this "shortcoming" has more to do with my obsessions than it does with any inadequacy on Brinkley's part. My idiosyncratic complaint: Brinkley doesn't spend near enough space on the proselytizing enthusiasm the mogul and his wife, Clare Boothe Luce, had for LSD and how that enthusiasm bled into Luce's Time and Life.

The Publisher limits its discussion of the Luces' personal interest in the hallucinogen to about three pages, noting that Clare's devotion to LSD far exceeded Henry's. He took it just once or maybe twice compared with Clare's multiple trips -- she later claimed it "saved our marriage." But for a deeper look at how Luce's magazines helped popularize the drug, we must turn to scholar Stephen Siff's 2008 paper "Henry Luce's Strange Trip: Coverage of LSD in Time and Life, 1954-68"

Great article with some interesting historical details. Thanks Matt!