Lecturer Peter Richardson's Book Explores Popularity of Grateful Dead

SF STATE NEWS -- What was it about the Grateful Dead that made it the most successful touring rock band of its time? The answer, Peter Richardson writes in his new book “No Simple Highway: A Cultural History of the Grateful Dead,” is fairly simple. “Many other bands had more commercial success, but the Dead had something those bands didn’t: a focus on community,” said Richardson, a lecturer in SF State’s Department of Humanities, in an SF State News article. “They offered their fans a social space to have some adventure, especially when they went on the road, and to do both of those things in a community of like-minded people.