Excellent and insightful look at a complex and fascinating visonary who helped changed the culture of the 20th century.

Excellent bio of AA's co-founder, based on interviews with Bill and those closest to him.

One of the few accounts of the Mexican War, Kirkham's journal contains many unique descriptions of U.S. military activity. He graduated from West Point in 1842. After serving on garrison and frontier duty, he participated in the Mexican War, where he was took part in the battles at Contreras and Clmrubusco and was wounded in the battle of Molino del Rey. He was noted for gallant and meritorious conduct in the storming of Chapultepec and assisted in the capture of Mexico City. While in Mexico he was one of a party of six American officers who climbed to the summit of Popocatapetl which hadn't been climbed since the time of Cortez.

this book is perfect for practicing as well as studying postgraduation. a comprehensive volume on fundamental and advanced endo

I bought the book, whereupon my pineal gland led me to the local supermarket, where I bought a couple of cabbages and conferred with them until they taught me all their secrets. Evil littler [things], I know, but it had to be done.

Seriously now, the book is great, I was already discordian before I read this. Insanity. Religious types who can't handle the fact that not everybody believes in their God, and that everything else is NOT evil, will really not enjoy this book. Good for atheists and open-minded religious types, and silly people all over the world. Always read while holding an apple in your left hand if you're right handed, left hand if you're left handed, and proceed to speak the text loudly and clearly in a Shakespearian tone. Wash down the book with a glass of squeezed hot dog bun for maximum enjoyment.

As others have pointed out, this is not an R.A.W. book, but much of his writing and philosophy stems from it. In actuality, it was written by Kerry Thornley, a 60s Berkeley radical, who himself became a victim of the type of conspiracies Wilson parodied in many of his other works.

That said, I recommend the "Principia" for anyone with a sense of humor. This is a work that will have you rolling off your chair at every turn. But, whether it's parody or not, you'll never be sure. Taking the form of the official tract and tenets of a non-existent (?) religion, it points out in a gonzo, agit-prop way the flaws and foibles of all religions that try to nail down the "Truth."

If you've read "Illuminatus!" then you'll recognize a lot of the rules that appear here. If you haven't, then this book is a good primer. The first time through, pretend it's all real. Subsequent times, enjoy the joke. In any case, it's something that needs to be read by people in the 90s, the decade that pretends to be oh too hip and beyond it all, but which, in reality, takes itself far too seriously for anyone's good.

Hail Eris! All Hail Discordia! And all that jazz...

It's a holy book. Therefore, holy folk of the appropriate persuasion are going to give it the full five stars or none at all, just to be contrary and suchlike. They are more enlightened than I am. As many of my fellow Gracious And Fancy Popes of the Word were prior to encountering Eris, I thought I was simply posessed of a sense of humor about the cosmic absurdity of It All. It is not so: I was a Discordian, and a Pope to boot. It's like getting a can of green beans for free when you buy one at the store.

As fiction, the Word is tripe. Hideous, slovenly stuff, written without care for typography or the quality of reasoning or illustrations. Bad bad bad. Naughty.

This is a good thing. If it made *sense*, it wouldn't be Erisian, would it? No. This is a Zen Surrealism haphazard cut-n-paste history and chronicle of the early days and times of our forefingers Malaclypse the Younger and Omar Khayyam-Ravenhurst, and how they met the Monkey who had Met the Goddess in a bowling alley, and how things happened beforehand and afterwards. The character of Eris Herself is intimately probed with loving gentleness for the first time, and the various signs and sigils related herunto explained in more or less detail. The Thing About Hot Dog Buns comes to light: a Discordian shall consume no hot dog buns for it was with a hot dog that Eris consoled herself after the Great Snub during the banquet of the gods at which the seeds of the Trojan War were planted. Therefore, on Fridays, a Discordian shall Go and Joyously Partake of a Hot Dog to thumb the nose at five of the world's major religions, thusly:

1. Catholicism: No meat on Fridays. 2. Hinduism: No meat of beef. 3. Judaism: No meat of pork. 4. Islam: No meat of pork. 5. Discordianism: No hot dog buns.

There are also a great many illustrations of dubious character, and no small abount of nose-swallowing. Things generally continue in this vein.

The basic dichotomy of the world (Eristic vs. Aneristic, bright chaos vs. dim stasis) is shamefully dualist as usually presented here, when it is not holy nonsense, and sages of the Word will do well to recall that the Hand of Eris has five asymmetrical fingers, and that these wierd fingers are the ones that spin the world. However, that aside--this is a do-it-yerself enlightenment kit, folks. Your pineal gland--it's a little raisin-sized thing under your forehead about where you'd expect a third eye to be if you had one--will thank you, and will probably feel free to speak up more often about things. You will become wiser and more groovy as a direct result of this new connection to Eris, and housepets will not flee from your approach. Before you know it you will be a Gourder, rather than a Gourdee. Before you know it, you'll know what all of this means, and you'll love it.

Robert Anton Wilson is one of the most forward thinkers of his time. Wilson's first book in this series leads you down his path of exploring the changes he underwent by using mind expanding drugs and experimenting with magick rituals. Wilson's storyline of his mind expansion intersects along the way with his real life and allows the reader an insight into what types of things were influencing his decisions as he probed deeper into this fantastical realm. The timeline shifts around but the reader is never dissatisfied. The second part of the book deals with the scientific basis behind his studies and those of other free thinkers such as Timothy Leary.

I first became interested in Wilson after reading the Illuminati trilogy. This book will only add to anyone's appreciation for that book and its author. This book provides some background into the events which are covered by the trilogy. In general, the Cosmic Trigger series begins with a bang. 4 stars losing one for the sometimes cryptic nature of the writing, but then again, that is RAW.

This is really the only book you need to buy by Robert A. Wilson; his fiction is pretty awful (cardboard characters and self-referential plots drowning in footnotes); and all his other nonfiction works are the same repetitive rambling about the strange soup he makes of his favorites: Leary's levels of consciousness, general semantics, James Joyce, western philosophy (all of which he well understands), mysticism (which he does not) and Wilson's own mediocre interpretation of the philosophical implications of the quantum theory (he's an old-school copenhagenist). Cosmic Trigger has all that but much more; autobiography lends it a lovely basic narrative structure that is far more affecting than any of his silly novels, it has the phantasmagoric black-comic mood he fails to quite pull off in fiction, and of course is written in his usual direct, smooth, readable, and frequently hilarious prose style. If only he weren't from the foul "take more dope" hedonistic-materialistic school of consciousness and hadn't therefore been eating acid like candy when he wrote this, we might even be able to relate some of these events from his internal universe of perception to the external universe we share.

This was my first introduction to the writings of Robert Anton Wilson, at a time in my life when the limited, inconsistant, and ludicrous models of reality offered by the world seemed too limiting to bear. What Wilson offers here appears (in my reality tunnel) to be a look into the largely misunderstood philosophy of agnosticism, as well as his own experiences with love, sex, drugs, yoga, magik, life, death, and governmental corruption.

Does this review capture Wilson, or Cosmic Trigger I in its entirety? Of course not, and Wilson is fully aware that his writings and non-beliefs defy any catagorization (his books are very hard to find in retail stores). All I can offer is my uninformed opinion that there is no wiser, more humorous, and generally more interesting than Robert Anton Wilson.

I was really excited to read this book after hearing someone talk about it. I looked forward to an insight on Bill's struggle with depression and also hearing the guidance he received from Father Dowling. In that way, the book did not disappoint. The letters are great. My complaint is the way this book is written. I am an avid reader, yet this book makes very little sense! I do not understand the authors point, his interpretations, why he even grouped sections of letters together. He doesn't seem to have a theme, that I can see. I still think this book is worth having in your collection, just for the letters.