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(NYTimes) In the winter of 1960-61, when their lives began to overlap in Cambridge, Mass., Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert, Andrew Weil and Huston Smith resembled tweedy extras from “Mad Men.” These future psychedelic pioneers were still buttoned-down intellectuals and careerists, men who leaned more toward martinis than marijuana.
Leary and Mr. Alpert (soon to be known as Ram Dass) taught in Harvard’s psychology department. Leary was a charismatic West Point dropout with a Ph.D. from Berkeley. Mr. Alpert was a brilliant lecturer — later in “The Harvard Psychedelic Club,” Don Lattin compares him to “a psychedelic Mort Sahl” — and a closeted gay man whose father was president of the New Haven Railroad. Continued