![_Dandy Warhols at Emo's East [Show Preview]](http://austinist.com/assets_c/2012/05/DandyWarhols-thumb-250x250-715813.jpg)
John McMillian at BookPeople [Reading Preview]
In the spirit of revolution and domestic upheaval, join John McMillian tonight at Bookpeople for a reading, discussion and signing of his book Smoking Typewriters: The Sixties Underground Press and the Rise of Alternative Media in America, which chronicles the rise of the New Left in the sixties with the help of the underground press. The book focuses heavily on the underground press organization Liberation News Service and its editors Raymond Mungo and Marshall Bloom, two men who brought many anxieties about war, politics, the environment and art to their papers' front pages, spurring a nationwide trend of alternative news sources.
Despite the anodyne content in current printed alternative newspapers, they were at one time a revolution all on their own. Their echos could be heard in more recent attempts while their reporting and opinions from still inform our current dialogue regarding social reforms, despite being accessed through different media. The sixties alternative press movement serves as a reminder of how important this culture is and how quickly it can become something more safe (HuffPo/AOL?). McMillian's book is a concise look at the success and ultimate failure of one instance in free press history and as is always the case, what we learn from it determines where we'll go.
