A Change of Consciousness: A Hippie's Memoir of the Sixties and Beyond

Lawyer and debut author Greenfield writes of his life as an unregenerate hippie, striking a chord among like-minded aging boomer readers as he successfully captures the "extraordinary times" that transformed both America and Greenfield, as well as how he "shared in the adventure and risk-taking of an era that sought great change." His journey from semi-rural Danville, Ill., to college at Stanford and life in San Francisco in 1968 began a lifelong procession down "the path less traveled at every opportunity." He participates in the antiwar movement, lives in one of Stanford's first communal houses, attends Grateful Dead concerts, experiments with LSD, and moves to a commune in New Mexico, where he dances in the Sufi fashion with the legendary Baba Ram Dass. He then spends time in Jerusalem and Alaska before beginning a career in law in Santa Fe and Albuquerque, where he fought against the greed of New Mexico's largest electric utility. Through it all, Greenfield's charmed life is bolstered by both his good sense of humor ("My vision of Israel did not have hookers in it") and his belief that an "evolution of consciousness can end the separation of each from the other." Looking back, he believes that the 1960s "have at least given us the hope that we can produce such an awakening." (BookLife)