The photos in here are amazing! Some are classics that I've seen many times, some were new to me! I definitely wasn't as familiar with the artwork of the beats, I have had more exposure to their writings. But to me, the pictures are the star of this book!
The written pieces were just so-so. It felt a little bit too much like a textbook on the beat culture. Still, during this time of civil unrest and upheaval, the chapter “Black Beats and Black Issues” really resonated with me! I read through that one twice!

Kind of ironic, that to me, the written portion of this book is very clinical, almost sterile. The beats wrote in a bee-bop sort of fashion, sort of jazzy, semi-free associative, and kind of wild. The pieces in here are more of a scholarly type. Not beat-like at all.
But, the beats changed, didn't they. William Burroughs in a Nike ad. Republican Clint Eastwood directing a film about Charlie Parker. Things change, things don't always make sense. Maybe that's kinda 'beat' after all! ( )