C-print, 21.8 x 28.8 cm on 22.9 x 33 cm paper (8.6 x 11.8 in. on 9 x 13 in. paper); hardcover volume in a slipcase, letterpress-printed text, two different paper stocks, plus tip-ins, 24 x 34 cm (9.4 x 13.4 in.), 356 pages.“Larry Schiller is the one who came up with so many of these primal pictures. It was he who broke the story in the first place!” —Tom WolfeIn 1964, famed writer Ken Kesey and his band of Merry Pranksters set off across America on a “Transcontinental Bus Tour,” headed for the New York World’s Fair. Kesey’s journey, in the company of his Merry Pranksters, lies at the heart of The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, an as-if-first-hand account of the group’s antics and ethos by Tom Wolfe, wunderkind of the New Journalism movement.This Art Edition presents Wolfe’s era-defining text in letterpress, along with facsimile reproductions of his manuscript pages, ephemera of the period, and photographs of the acid scene by Lawrence Schiller and Ted Streshinksy. The accompanying print, The Hollywood Acid Test, February 25, 1966 by Lawrence Schiller, captures a defining event in the LSD craze. While The Grateful Dead provided the live music, Pranksters including Lee Quarnstrom and Mountain Girl curated the movies, “audioptics,” and “stroboscopic ballet machine.”The costumed revelers dancing into the small hours of the night endures as one of Schiller’s most iconic images from his coverage of the LSD scene. It was the lone color photo reproduced in the best-selling book LSD (1966) and featured on the cover of the Capitol Records LP of the same name and year. Schiller brought his own strobe light to hang high in the rafters so he could shoot the picture at a slow shutter speed, simultaneously capturing the natural light and multiple images under the effect of the strobe. It was three days before he saw the images from that adrenalin-filled night, one of the color frames catching his eye. “This image is alive,” he says. “Nothing else matters.”Marking the year of original publication, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is limited to 1,968 signed copies. Copies No. 101–200 come with the signed black-and-white-fiber-based gelatin silver print The Hollywood Acid Test, 1966, by Lawrence Schiller.Also available as:Art Edition (No. 1–100) with an alternative print, Me and My Shadow.Collector’s Edition (No. 200–1,968), each signed by Tom Wolfe.The authorsTom Wolfe is the author of a dozen books, among them such contemporary classics as The Bonfire of the Vanities, The Right Stuff, and I Am Charlotte Simmons. He lives in New York City.Lawrence Schiller began his career as a photojournalist for Life, Time, and Paris Match, photographing some of the most iconic figures of the 1960s, from Lee Harvey Oswald to Robert F. Kennedy, from Ali and Foreman to Redford and Newman. His book projects include the Pulitzer Prize–winning book The Executioner’s Song, by Norman Mailer, five New York Times bestsellers, and Marilyn & Me. He has directed or produced 20 motion pictures for television; The Executioner’s Song and Peter the Great won five Emmys.Ted Streshinsky (1923–2003) was a photojournalist best known for his coverage of the social and political turmoil of the 1960s and ’70s in California, from migrant worker strikes to antiwar protests. His wide-ranging portrayal of the counterculture in San Francisco included the hippies, and Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters on the high-voltage night of the Acid Test Graduation.