Flip through one, or all, of these tomes.
To Aspen and Back: An American Journey By Peggy Clifford (St. Martin’s Press)
How Aspen was made and remade from the 1950s through the 1970s, from the acerbic local columnist who chronicled it in real time.
One Hour Ahead: The Avant-Garde in Aspen, 1945-2004 By Dean Sobel (Aspen Art Museum)
How Aspen became an unlikely outpost for contemporary art.
The Great Shark Hunt By Hunter S. Thompson (Simon & Schuster)
This grab bag of gonzo journalism from the Woody Creek-based legend of letters includes his seminal Rolling Stone piece, “The Battle of Aspen,” about his quixotic 1970 run for Pitkin County sheriff.
Freak Power By Daniel Joseph Watkins (Meat Possum Press)
It’s a coffee-table book feast for the senses, vividly telling the story of the hippie influx and Hunter S. Thompson’s sheriff campaign through the art, photography and journalism of the time.
Lost Sheep: Aspen’s Counterculture in the 1970s By Kurt Brown (Conundrum Press)
Sex, drugs, poetry, Ted Bundy and Aspen’s hippie heyday rendered in Technicolor prose from the founder of the Aspen Writers Conference, now Aspen Words.
Don’t Save Anything By James Salter (Counterpoint)
Elegant essays on skiing and mountain living from the longtime Aspenite and novelist.
Today Will Be Different By Maria Semple (Little, Brown and Company)
This Aspen native and bestselling novelist mines her childhood for an authentic and hilarious romp.
Heaven By Rowan Ricardo Phillips (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
A winter residency in Aspen inspired gorgeous and unpredictable nature poems.
Most titles available at Explore Booksellers, 221 E. Main St., explorebooksellers.com
Photography by: ANNIE SPRATT
