Author eyes ‘Highway 61’

Author Dennis McNally will discuss his latest book, “On Highway 61” at 7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 16, at Readers’ Books, 130 E. Napa St.

McNally has written books about Jack Kerouac, “Desolate Angel,” a history of the Grateful Dead, “A Long Strange Trip,” and was publicist for the Dead for 25 years.

“I began ‘On Highway 61/Race, Music, and the Evolution of Cultural Freedom,’ as an effort to seek the deeper roots of why the 1960s happened – why so many people asked so many profound and challenging questions about American beliefs,” he said. “The war in Vietnam, LSD, the birth control pill, folk and rock music – all of them were important immediate causes. But I wanted to go much deeper.”