New Beat book by a true Beat

Anyone interested in the Beat Generation should look up
www.ruinedtime.com - that features a new book, RUINED TIME: The 1950s
and the Beat, written by Robert Briggs who was reading poetry to jazz
in The Jazz Cellar in San Francisco back in 1957.

Ruined Time is a fascinating read, a memoir of the 1950s, that pivotal
decade of the 20th century which, ruptured by the Great Depression,
World War II and Hiroshima, was revitalized by a Beat Generation but -
at the same time - monopolized by a military-industrial complex that
not only corporatized the Cold War but sowed the seeds of today's
freakish globalism.

The poet David Meltzer said that RUINED TIME was "..the book within the
book, the history within the mystery, the mythology of the '50s, the
so-called Beat Generation. Briggs reveals the real deal as a
participant in that confounding history. His work is a remarkable
embodiment of the personal as well as the political; a brave
demonstration of tough insight, survival and triumph. Briggs brings it
all into play - not as a fantasy or mythoblathering hype, but as the
ongoing and complex struggle all dissident spirits had to (and have to)
contend with in dark yet illuminated days."