Charles Manson in Depth Essay

A RC A D E P U B LIS H I N G, An imprint of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc. New York, New York www.arcadepub.com

Cover design by Erin Seaward-Hiatt Cover photograph: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images Printed in the United States of America

JEFFREY MELNICK

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“A riveting meditation on the afterlife of the Manson Family.” —ALICE ECHOLS, author of Scars of Sweet Paradise:

The Life and Times of Janis Joplin

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ISBN-10: 1-948924-76-5 ISBN-13: 978-1-948924-76-4

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True Crime US $18.99/Can $25.99

“A capacious, witty, and insightful take on how and why we are still so fascinated by Charles Manson and his Family. Melnick is a keen reader of high and low arti- facts, and he is wonderfully precise in tracing all the Manson-related references and ramifications from 1969 to the present. He has a gift for presenting complex ideas in savvy, compelling prose. A must read not just for Manson aficionados but for anyone interested in recent American pop culture.” — DA N A SPI OT TA , author of Innocents and Others

With a New Epilogue, Updated from Its Hardcover Edition Titled Creepy Crawling: Charles Manson and the Many Lives of America’s Most Infamous Family

“CREEPY CR AWLING” WAS THE M ANSON FA MILY’S PR ACTICE of secretly enter- ing someone’s home, and without harming anyone, leaving only a trace of evidence that they had been there, some reminder that the sanctity of the private home had been breached. Now, author Jeffrey Melnick reveals just how much the Family creepy crawled their way through Los Angeles in the sixties and then on through American social, political, and cul- tural life for fifty years, firmly lodging themselves in our minds. Even now, it is almost impossible to discuss the sixties, teenage runaways, sexuality, drugs, music, California, or even the concept of family without referencing Manson and his “girls.”

Not just another Charles Manson history, Charles Manson’s Creepy Crawl: The Many Lives of America’s Most Infamous Family explores how the Family weren’t so much outsiders as emblem- atic of the Los Angeles counterculture freak scene, and how Manson worked to connect him- self to the mainstream of the time. Ever since they spent two nights killing seven residents of Los Angeles—what we now know as the “Tate-LaBianca murders”—the Manson family has rarely slipped from the American radar for long. From Emma Cline’s The Girls to the TV show Aquarius, as well as two major films in 2019, including Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, the family continues to find an audience. What is it about Charles Manson and his family that captivates us still? Author Jeffrey Melnick sets out to answer this question in this fascinating and compulsively readable cultural history of the Family and their influence from 1969 to the present.

J E F F R E Y M E L N I C K has been thinking about the Manson Family since first encounter- ing the book and miniseries Helter Skelter in the 1970s. Melnick is a professor at University of Massachusetts Boston and the author of 9/11 Culture: America Under Construction (Wiley- Blackwell, 2009), Black-Jewish Relations on Trial (University Press of Mississippi, 2000), and A Right to Sing the Blues (Harvard University Press, 1999). He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. T H E M A N Y L I V E S O F A M E R I C A’ S

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