Books published by Thunder's Mouth Press

A raucous eruption of language and a showcase for the best essayists of our time, "The Outlaw Bible of American Essays" chronicles American history and measures the boundlessness of dissident thought.

The self-proclaimed foremost authority on the penis combines answers to questions about sexuality, circumcision, and strange behavior with deeply researched history, poignant true-life confessions, and insights from the hilarious to the downright obscene.

The novel that launched the beat generation's literary legacy describes the world of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and Neil Cassady. Drafted two months before Jack Kerouac began On The Road, Go is the first and most accurate chronicle of the private lives lived by the Beats before they became public figures. In honest, lucid fictional prose designed to capture the events, emotions, and essence of his experience among the Beats, Holmes describes an individualistic post-World War II New York where crime is celebrated, writing is revered, and parties, booze, discussions, drugs, and sex punctuate life. The most tentative and conservative of the Beats, Holmes's intelligent and sensitive voice also details the pressures and regrets that his lifestyle gave birth to. With portraits of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Neil Cassady, William Burroughs, this first novel about the Beat Generation gives us a peek into what it meant to be a Beat before the term had ever been used. "... still one of the best novels about the Beat Generation ... brilliant and important.",The Los Angeles Free Press " I want to write to you about ... your book. You did the honest thing, the big thing, the good thing.",Jack Kerouac "Go signaled the start of something new in American literature. A generation with a new consciousness had found its voice...",Ann Charters

While Eric Burdon may be best remembered for his unforgettable vocals on the Animals'' platinum hit, "House of the Rising Sun," this Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member has never stopped having adventures. Burdon was ripped off by unscrupulous agents, accountants, and record labels, hounded by the police, and framed for a crime he didn''t commit. Yet through it all, he never became bitter. He was the first rocker to play behind the Iron Curtain. He sang with Jimi Hendrix, chased Jim Morrison out of his house with a .44, and introduced John Lee Hooker to the toughest venue Hooker ever played. Eric Burdon explains how he became the "Egg Man" in the Beatles'' "I am the Walrus." With the enthusiasm and good humor of his live shows, Burdon recalls the tense reunion between John Lennon and Lennon''s long-estranged father; racing motorcycles across the California desert with Steve McQueen; picketing the offices of MGM Records for nonpayment of royalties; performing in wartime Sarajevo with a symphony orchestra; getting run out of Meridian, Mississippi for promoting black music, and singing his heart out year after year. A complete discography and fifty photographs, many never before published, are included in this unforgettable memoir. "Burdon has lived like a real rocker." —The New York Times Book Review "Riveting and informative."—Los Angeles Times "These reminiscences will delight Burdon''s fans ... in general."—Library Journal

Sometimes our understanding of our universe is given a huge boost by one insightful thinker. Such a boost came in the first half of the twentieth century, when an obscure Belgian priest put his mind to deciphering the nature of the cosmos. Is the universe evolving to some unforeseen end, or is it static, as the Greeks believed? The debate has preoccupied thinkers from Heraclitus to the author of the Upanishads, from the Mayans to Einstein. "The Day Without Yesterday" covers the modern history of an evolving universe, and how Georges Lemaitre convinced a generation of thinkers to embrace the notion of cosmic expansion and the theory that this expansion could be traced backward to the cosmic origins, a starting point for space and time that Lemaitre called "the day without yesterday." Lemaitre's skill with mathematics and the equations of relativity enabled him to think much more broadly about cosmology than anyone else at the time, including Einstein. Lemaitre proposed the expanding model of the universe to Einstein, who rejected it. Had Einstein followed Lemaitre's thinking, he could have predicted the expansion of the universe more than a decade before it was actually discovered.

From being a crucial influence on the Renaissance to developing into a fruitful source of inspiration for many important artists, this hidden history of the occult features essays by noted writers and thinkers, from William Blake to H.G. Wells.

Through interviews and critical essays, and excerpts from Vollmann's books, journalism, essays, correspondence, and poetry, "Expelled from Eden" creates a unique, kaleidoscopic portrait of one of America's most important writers.

Readers are taken into the heart of organized crime in this anthology of writings from some of the masters of the genre, ranging from Peter Massand and E. L. Doctorow to Mario Puzo and Nicholas Pileggi, and from law enforcement insiders and mobsters such as Sam Giancana. Photos.

"Wild Blue" collects the most gripping accounts of what some would call the greatest achievement of the century: controlled flight. From the soaring to the harrowing, these accounts put readers right in the cockpit. 16 photos.

In the 1930s, while the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression sent most of America into the doldrums, a lively intellectual and artistic community formed in the West, revolving around three legendary friends: Ed Ricketts, John Steinbeck, and Joseph Campbell. Steinbeck immortalized Monterey's bohemian spirit in Cannery Row, but the area's true lifeblood was his best friend and mentor, Ed Ricketts. Today Ed Ricketts is usually remembered as "Doc",the beer-drinking philosopher-scientist who presided over Monterey's population of "whores, pimps, gamblers, and sons of bitches" in Cannery Row,but Ricketts was actually a trailblazing ecologist who did seminal work in the emerging field on the Pacific Coast. His ideas were decades before their time, and his two books, Between Pacific Tides and Sea of Cortez (coauthored with Steinbeck), are still considered classics. Now, some sixty years after his untimely death, Ricketts' ecological approach and ethic seem more relevant than ever.

Spanning 40 years and including Himes''s first work, written during his imprisonment in the 1940s, this collection uncovers the internal struggles of black individuals caught between resignation and rage, probing the heart of the African-American experience with wit, indignation, and ruthless honesty.

Whether it's Peter Boardman on being forced to leave a friend to die near the summit, Stephen Venables on spending a night out near the summit, almost every great climbing writer has tackled some aspect of the mountain, and "Epics on Everest" includes their best work.

A leading authority on obsessive disorders considers the experiences and expressions of love, offering an eloquent, thought-provoking, and endlessly illuminating look at one of the most important aspects of human behavior.

The road that leads from the Möbius strip — a common-sense-defying continuous loop with only one side and one edge, made famous by the illustrations of M.C. Escher — goes to some of the strangest spots imaginable. It takes us to where the purely intellectual enters our world: where our senses, overloaded with grocery bills, the price of gas, and what to eat for lunch, are expected to absorb really bizarre ideas. And no better guide to this weird universe exists than the brilliant thinker Clifford A. Pickover, the 21st century''s answer to Buckminster Fuller. From molecules and metal sculptures to postage stamps, architectural structures, and models of the universe, The Möbius Strip gives readers a glimpse of new ways of thinking and other worlds as Pickover reaches across cultures and peers beyond our ordinary reality. Lavishly illustrated, this is an infinite fountain of wondrous forms that can be used to help explain how mathematics has permeated every field of scientific endeavor, such as the colors of a sunset or the architecture of our brains; how it helps us build supersonic aircraft and roller coasters, simulate the flow of Earth''s natural resources, explore subatomic quantum realities, and depict faraway galaxies.

While the supremely popular "Steal This Book" is a guide to living outside the establishment, "Revolution for the Hell of It" is a chronicle of Abbie Hoffman's radical escapades that doubles as a guidebook for today's social and political activist.

A Beginner''s Guide to Immortality is a celebration of unusual lives and creative thinkers who punched through ordinary cultural norms while becoming successful in their own niches. In his latest and greatest work, world-renowned science writer Cliff Pickover studies such colofrul characters as Truman Capote, John Cage, Stephen Wolfram, Ray Kurzweil, and Wilhelm Rontgen, and their curious ideas. Through these individuals, we can better explore life''s astonishing richness and glimpse the diversity of human imagination. Part memoir and part surrealistic perspective on culture, A Beginner''s Guide to Immortality gives readers a glimpse of new ways of thinking and of other worlds as he reaches across cultures and peers beyond our ordinary reality. He illuminates some of the most mysterious phenomena affecting our species. What is creativity? What are the religious implications of mosquito evolution, simulated Matrix realities, the brain''s own marijuana, and the mathematics of the apocalypse? Could we be a mere software simulation living in a matrix? Who is Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and Emanuel Swedenborg? Did church forefathers eat psychedelic snails? How can we safely expand our minds to become more successful and reason beyond the limits of our own intuition? How can we become immortal?

From fallen porn star John Holmes to jailed pop star Rick James, to the assassination of Irish reporter Veronica Guerin, this collection by the award-winning "Esquire" and "Rolling Stone" journalist brings pop culture's underbelly into dark focus.