Once again, Adam Gorightly has shown himself to be the hippest, most in-tune writer on the scene today. Following on the heels of The Shadow Over Santa Susana (the best book ever written about Charles Manson), The Prankster and the Conspiracy (JFK assassination paranoia at its finest), and Death Cults, this self-described ‘crackpot historian’ has hit another home-run with a collection of his most inspired writings from the past twelve years. In fact, I’d even go so far as to say that if I were ever exiled on a remote island for the rest of my life and could only take the books of ten authors with me, one of them would definitely be Adam Gorightly.

Why, you may wonder? The answer is simple: whenever one peruses Gorightly’s material, it’s like reading the work of a hundred different writers at the same time. That’s because Gorightly is so eclectic in his tastes, and so varied in his subject matter, that you end-up sampling a cross-section of information that is so vast it covers the entire spectrum of what we call the underground press and/or alternative media. The result is a cornucopia of high-weirdness, true crime, conspiracy politics, rock n’ roll, the counter-culture, literature, cinema, mind control, and the occult (and that’s just for starters).

Thus, his books about Manson and Kerry Thornley go so far beyond their central subjects that they become a cavalcade of esoteric history, pop culture, and bizarre hidden associations that strangely inter-connect everything together. But as is characteristic of any quality writer, Gorightly’s tie-ins not only attempt to solve the puzzles at hand, but also open up entirely new doors with even more questions and mysteries. In this sense, a reader can run the gamut on any number of topics, see them in an entirely new light, then ultimately realize that instead of reaching the end of the rainbow, they’re once again plunged back down another rabbit hole filled with even more labyrinth-like turns, transformations, oddities, and symbolic synchronicities.

In his latest collection, the above analysis certainly holds true, for we are quickly offered the story of Dock Ellis, a former major league baseball pitcher for the Pittsburgh Pirates who, after dropping a hit of LSD, threw a no-hitter! There are also chapters on the great Jack Kerouac, the Satan-rock n’ roll connection, preeminent political researcher Jim Keith, the evil Bush crime family, Montauk, and material reminiscent of Donna Kossy’s fabulously entertaining book Kooks.

My favorite section, though (and this may surprise the author), was his overview of Stanley Kubrick’s final film, Eyes Wide Shut, starring Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. Of course anyone who has ever wandered into the conspiracy research field recognized that something much deeper was going on with this flick than what met the eye, and to his credit Gorightly expertly hammers home the links between Monarch sex slave programming, the CIA’s MK-ULTRA, multiple personality disorder, and secret societies. Quite an intriguing piece of writing if I do say so!

I could go on and on, but here’s my advice: take a trip to that cool little island where Adam Gorightly resides and get a load of what he’s laying down. But be careful and proceed with caution, for once you’ve entered his Dr. Moreau-like realm of high-discordia, you might not be able to (or want to) find your way back out.