From Canyon To Cove:

It’s hard to believe that the idyllic Laguna Canyon enclave of Woodland Drive, not too far from the Boys & Girls Club of Laguna Beach, was once known as Dodge City because of the gunfire that tended to erupt there in the 1960s.

That was a long time ago, but it seems memories are still fresh about the days when Laguna Beach — and Woodland Drive — was the center of a sophisticated and highly entrepreneurial international drug ring that imported and sold marijuana, hashish and the “new” drug, LSD, with a zeal and business-savvy that could have impressed a Donald Trump.

That’s also when psychologist- turned-drug guru Timothy Leary — who had been kicked out of Harvard University for sanctioned LSD experimentation and later arrested after LSD became illegal — was given shelter in the canyon by the secretive and still-mysterious Brotherhood of Eternal Love. People are still trying to figure out if the Brotherhood was a group of Orange County street thugs, a drug cartel, a hippie mafia or a cult of mystics determined to spread peace and love throughout the world. Or all of the above.

OC Weekly investigative reporter Nick Schou has been on the case for years, and has just published a fascinating book called “Orange Sunshine — The Brotherhood of Eternal Love and Its Quest to Spread Peace, Love and Acid to the World.”

Schou’s book reads like a movie treatment, complete with hair-raising scenes of international smuggling in Afghanistan, near-arrests and miraculous escapes, surfing on acid, psychic visions, UFOs, and, of course, Leary and his bizarre escapades.

Another, more scholarly work focusing on Leary and his Harvard cohorts has also just come out: “The Harvard Psychedelic Club — How Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, Houston Smith and Andrew Weil Killed the Fifties and Ushered in a New Age For America.” This book is by Don Lattin, a veteran religion writer for the San Francisco Chronicle and a national commentator on religious topics. Lattin says in an afterward to his book that he had wanted to write about LSD ever since experiencing “good” and “bad” acid trips in his early 20s.

Both books are at Latitude 33 bookshop, and both authors will be making appearances there soon.