“If you want to know what the ’60s really were about, you’ll find out between [these] covers.”—The Kansas City Star

“[Thirsting for Peace in a Raging Century] restores Edward Sanders to his rightful place at the forefront of the poetry of his time, and reminds us that spending one's days in active pursuit of the betterment of all life on the planet isn't necessarily antithetical to the creation of first-rate writing.”—San Francisco Chronicle

This American Book Award–winning collection begins with Edward Sanders' famous first "Poem from Jail," written in 1961 during his incarceration for disrupting the christening of a nuclear submarine, and covers the twenty tumultuous years that followed. Now back in print, this vital addition to all collections of contemporary American poetry and culture chronicles Sanders’ literary, political, and rock 'n' roll adventures, as well as the joys of life in rural Woodstock, New York.

A legend of the American counterculture, Edward Sanders’ recent books include Poems for New Orleans and Let’s Not Keep Fighting the Trojan War.

The major work from a hero of Beat poetry, political activism, and rock 'n' roll.

“Sanders [is] the poet-maestro of American history.”—Michael McClure

“Sanders has been an astonishing and fertile presence n our cutlural and political landscape...But it is Sanders's poetry, more than anything else he does, that pulls together all the varied strands of his interests to weave them in to the body of one of our century's most coherent poetics.”—Andrei Codrescu, National Public Radio

“In Sanders' poetry we find...one of the clearest and most necessary bodies of work still being written today.”— Poetry Project Newsletter

Picking up where Thirsting for Peace in a Raging Century left off and spanning more than two decades, Edward Sanders’ new collection animates the whole of human history—breathing new life into ancient stories, celebrating artists and activists, telling tales of beatnik escapades, eulogizing friends and politicians, and lamenting the follies that have led us to war time and again.

Illustrated throughout, Sanders’ poems contain visuals that range from drawings of Egyptian hieroglyphs to a scan of Robert Creeley’s sage counsel, written on a napkin: “Things / come and go. / Then / let them.”

Sanders also offers his own advice in “To the Revolutionaries Not Yet Born”:

Work in extra dimensions
Think 100 years ahead
Enjoy your Revolution
Show enough mercy so
that Mercy shows the way

With exuberant pragmatism and visionary scholarship, Sanders continues to mark the way forward for poets and peacemakers, rock 'n' rollers, and revolutionaries.

Edward Sanders is the best-selling author of the Charles Manson exposé The Family, author of the recently published Poems for New Orleans, and a recipient of the American Book Award. He is also a founding member of the legendary rock group The Fugs, a classics scholar, publisher, former bookseller, and pioneer in investigative poetics. He lives in Woodstock, New York.