How the Occult Haunted Music, Movies and Pop Culture, 1966–1980
by George Case
Publication Date: March 18, 2016
In 1966, secular rationality seemed so dominant that Time magazine ran a cover story that asked, “Is God dead?” No one could have anticipated that mysticism, the irrational and the Occult would rule American popular culture for the next 15 years.
Here’s to My Sweet Satan is the first book to fully document the Occult craze of the 1960s and 1970s, when the Devil, demonic possession, and magic became the dominant themes of music, books, movies, and even Saturday morning cartoon shows.
A sweeping and masterful cultural history, Here’s to My Sweet Satan tells how the Occult conquered the American imagination, weaving together topics as diverse as the birth of heavy metal, Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist, New Age cults, Bigfoot, Scooby-Doo, Count Chocula cereal, the serial killer Son of Sam, and more.
Here’s to My Sweet Satan is both a fun, nostalgic look at some of the campier aspects of 60s/70s pop culture (remember Dark Shadows, pyramid power, In Search Of … and Chariots of the Gods?) and a serious inquiry into the origins of the dark, disturbing phenomena of the era, from the Manson Family murders to the Jonestown massacre. Cultural critic George Case gives a superb account of the crisscrossing artistic and cultural influences that intersected between the Occult, rock music, paperback fiction and pop culture of the period. (Case’s account of how Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band led to heavy metal is a must-read for all rock fans.)
Here’s to My Sweet Satan ties the many manifestations of the Occult craze into a single cultural movement, a crucial turning point that permanently changed American society, creating the cultural framework for the political power of the religious right, false accusations of Satanic child abuse, and today’s widespread rejection of science and rationality. An insightful blend of pop culture and social history, Here’s to My Sweet Satan lucidly explains how the most technological society on earth became enthralled by the supernatural.
About the Author: George Case is a writer on ideas and popular culture, and an acknowledged authority on the band Led Zeppelin. He is the author of Led Zeppelin FAQ, Calling Dr. Strangelove and several other books. Case has also contributed several articles to the social science journal Skeptic.
$18.95 ($23.95 Canada) • Hardcover • 6″ x 9″ • 196 pages
ISBN 978-1-61035-265-9
A Relaxing Return to Nature
Illustrated by Sigita Alekne
Available now!
Adult coloring books are taking the publishing world by storm—or perhaps it would be better to say, by a calming wave. As a meditative refuge from the modern world of constant overstimulation, 24/7 activity schedules, and incessantly blinking and beeping electronic devices, coloring books are giving adults a
new way to relax, explore their creative sides, and focus their minds.
In today’s world of constant motion and distraction, we all yearn for a return to the calming world of nature. Coloring book fans will love taking a restorative excursion into the organic world of Crystal Meadows Coloring Book. Colorists will lose themselves for hours in these intricate, otherworldly images of plants, flowers, and trees.
Designed by Lithuanian artist Sigita Alekne, the images in Crystal Meadows Coloring Book reflect Alekne’s unabashed love of nature and living things. Crystal Meadows Coloring Book is especially designed to provide a high-quality coloring experience. Thick,high-quality paper, printed on only one side, gives a smooth, firm coloring surface with no bleed-through, and perforated pages let colorists share and preserve their creative work.
Like a cool walk into a primeval forest, Crystal Meadows Coloring Book will calm your restless spirit and refocus your artistic mind.
About the Illustrator: Sigita Alekne was born in 1985 in Telsiai in northwest Lithuania. Raised in the countryside, Alekne grew up close to nature and has always been fascinated by the beauty and calmness of the natural world. Alekne graduated in 2011 with a master’s degree in human rights from the law school of Mykolas Romeris University and has worked for the Lithuanian national LGBT rights organization, one of the oldest human rights organizations established in Lithuania since its independence from the Soviet Union. For the last five years, she has dedicated herself to her artistic work. Alekne is married and lives in Vilnius.
$12.95 ($16.95 Canada) • Trade Paperback • 8½” x 10” •
104 pages
ISBN 978-1-61035-285-7
Encouraged and supported by her colleague and mentor, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, Fanslow-Brunjes
Available Now!
Gayle Taylor Davis had it all —a husband she adored, two successful daughters, and a career she enjoyed. Then one phone call took it all away, when a policeman called to tell her that her husband of 32 years had suddenly died of a heart attack. Plunged into the strange new world of grief, Davis began to write to make sense of her experience.
Grief Sucks … But Love Bears All Things is Davis’s deeply personal account of how she climbed out of grief, step by painful step — a no-holds-barred look at personal pain that is rarely shared or talked about. Davis reveals the worst moments of what she describes as “gut-wrenching, ass-kicking grief” — days of tears, nights of wailing, and thoughts of suicide — and teaches the reader through her example that one can survive the worst.
Grief Sucks isn’t a self-help book, but an account of suffering that prepares the reader for the worst that life inevitably inflicts on us all. Written for the recently bereaved, Grief Sucks directly faces the wound of losing a loved one, focusing on how one can live through emotional pain and coming out the other side.
Instead of encouraging passive acceptance of mandatory stages of grief, Grief Sucks shows readers that grief is s life on loss or survival.
A brutally honest and intimate portrayal of raw grief in all its pain and ugliness, Grief Sucks rejects simple-minded words of comfort to address loss with the stark truth: This is the worst pain you will ever feel. And you will survive it.
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