Available from Amazon April 9th
A Highly Acclaimed
Book by
Bernard Ross
PRAISE FOR BUSTING TIMOTHY LEARY
Steven L. Davis, co-author of
The Most Dangerous Man in America. Winner of the Pen Center Literary Award.
"I couldn't put this down! Bernard Ross' rollicking novel, inspired by an outlandish true story, deftly captures the spirit of the 1960s with humor, wisdom and compassion. Highly recommended!"
Sonia Taitz, author of
The Watchmaker's Daughter and
Down Under.
"Busting Timothy Leary is a rousing and picaresque romp through the highs and lows of the psychedelic 60s and its guru, Timothy Leary. Bernard Ross knows his world, and his novel glows with authenticity, experience, and verve."
BUSTING TIMOTHY LEARY
Embark on a captivating journey into the wild and transformative landscape of the 1960s, a time of political activism, cultural revolution, and a demand for social change led mainly by young people challenging existing norms and structures. The novel begins with Sean Kelly—a combat-hardened Green Beret—from a small southern town being recruited by the army to infiltrate Timothy Leary’s LSD cult. To be successful, he must become a convincing hippie and function on drugs, including LSD, without jeopardizing the mission.
Sean enters the epicenters of the hippie movement: the Haight Ashbury section of San Francisco, the East Village of New York, and Timothy Leary’s LSD mansion in Millbrook, New York. His mission also takes him to the heart of the radical student movement, where he experiences violent student protests and race riots. Many of his long-held beliefs come into question once he experiences expanded consciousness, free love, spiritual revelations, civil rights, and the need for social justice. His Green Beret skills are tested during some violent and dangerous encounters.
Sean’s journey is a remarkable story of personal transformation and love, deepened by his evolving self-awareness and the powerful realization that his life is a spiritual journey of self-discovery.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Bernard Ross is an author who has worked as a controller, feature film accountant, and as an entrepreneur in the computer technology field. He published his first book, Sipping Sunlight, in 2024, which received good reviews. The memoir includes his exploits during the 1960s, first as a hippie living in New York City, then with Leary at Millbrook, and finally in a hippie commune. He also lived in an ashram in India for five months in 1970 with his guru, Sant Kirpal Singh. His memoir is divided into three sections: The Hippie, The Devotee, and The Entrepreneur.
He retired at 76 and splits his time between his homes in Delray Beach, Florida, and Brewster, New York. Ross attended City College of New York and the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, became a CPA, founded three companies, and co-founded another. Ross, a child of Holocaust survivors, was born in Poland and immigrated to Bolivia as an infant. When he was five years old, he immigrated to the U.S.A. with his family. Hard work and frugality were the survival tools of his family. He began working when he was twelve, and those tools served him well throughout his life.
Ross has practiced meditation since 1969 and attributes his success in life and business to the benefits he gained through meditation and following the ethical principles of his spiritual path. His hobbies include tennis, pickleball, travel, photography, gardening, nature walks, and writing. Ross is happily married and is blessed to have a wonderful, close-knit family of four children and four grandchildren.