"Both Rubacher and Manson are brilliant, intuitive, half-mad artists and psychologists/manipulators...only God knows why one uses his energy and talent for good and why one wastes it in evil. Rubacher is on to something." San Francisco Chronicle "Rubacher's journey to the heart of darkness was not without travail. During the two years he corresponded with Manson, Rubacher says, he endured threats from members of the family and from Manson. Manson ordered several family members to pay menacing visits to Rubacher at his home." Sacramento Bee "R&R, I may let you live. Then again, maybe not. Sweet dreams." Charles Manson "The author has incredible courage or is mad to involve himself with the psychopathic killer." Lawrence McLoughlin, Speakers Bureau, Pattaya Expats Club, Thailand "Charlie Manson is one of the most intriguing personalities in law enforcement history. To study him is to confront evil at its worst." Ret. Lt. H. Sigworth, Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.

“Gives us a portrait close to the truth” of the man responsible for the Tate-LaBianca murders that changed Hollywood and ended the sixties (The New York Times Book Review). This astonishing book lays bare the life and the mind of a man whose acts have left us horrified. His story provides an enormous amount of new information about his life and how it led to the Tate-LaBianca murders and reminds us of the complexity of the human condition. Born in the middle of the Depression to an unmarried fifteen-year-old, Manson lived through a bewildering succession of changing homes and substitute parents, until his mother finally asked the state authorities to assume his care when he was twelve. Regimented and often brutalized in juvenile homes, Manson became immersed in a life of petty theft, pimping, jail terms, and court appearances that culminated in seven years of prison. Released in 1967, he suddenly found himself in the world of hippies and flower children, a world that not only accepted him, but even glorified his anti-establishment values. It was a combination that led, for reasons only Charles Manson can fully explain, to tragedy. Manson’s story, distilled from seven years of interviews and examinations of his correspondence, provides sobering insight into the making of a criminal mind, and a fascinating picture of the last years of the sixties. “A glimpse of part of the American experience that is rarely described from the inside . . . It compels both interest and horror.”—The Washington Post “Provides a fascinating glimpse into the mind of a truly dangerous human being.”—Los Angeles Herald Examiner

The true story of the Manson murders.

Charles Manson, a famous criminal who had sponsored a wave of murders in the United States in the 1960s, died at the age of 83. A look back at the psychopathic guru's hallucinating journey. "Have you ever dreamed of a place you didn't remember going to?" asks ex-hippie Peter Fonda to a young woman fascinated by the sixties in Steven Soderbergh's The English in 1999. A place that may only exist in your imagination. A distant place, only half of which you remember when you woke up. When you were there, you knew the language, you knew how to handle it. That was the 1960s. No, not even that. Only 66 and the beginning of 67. That's all". And then what?

Having lost his girlfriend to a college quarterback, and his best friend to the war in Vietnam, Billy “Shep” Shepherd left his home in rural South Carolina to experience the Summer of Love in California in 1967. He was looking to find himself. Instead, he found Charles Manson. In less than 2 1/2 years, Shep goes from being a naive teenager to partying with the Beach Boys and The Doors and sitting by the pool with Candice Bergen and Sharon Tate. Along the way, he becomes a member of the “Manson Family,” and Charles Manson’s most trusted confidant. A story of the sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll of the sixties that evolves into a story of love and friendship then madness and murder, Family Man will make you laugh, cry, and re-write the history of everything you think you know about the Manson murders.

Presented as a series of letters between Adams and his former student, Zach, Letters to a Young Progressive reveals how the "education" of college kids across the country is producing a generation of unhappy, unimaginative, and unproductive adults. The perfect book to help parents prevent--or undo--the ubiquitous liberal brainwashing of their children before it is too late.

The gripping story of the real Charles Manson as told by his long-time prison administrator, counselor, unofficial press agent, and confidant, Ed George. “Throughout my life, people have asked me about Manson. . . . “Does he have hypnotic powers?” “Does he have a diabolical charisma?” . . . “Is he crazy?” My response is that for some people, the answer to all of the above is yes—except for the last question.” —Edward George Charles Manson was perhaps the most infamous criminal of the twentieth century. Convicted for orchestrating the shocking Tate-LaBianca murders in 1969, and for two other killings, there has been much written about him. But not many people knew him as well as Edward George, who over years of conversations with Manson as his prison administrator, counselor, unofficial “press agent,” and confidant, gained deep insight into Manson’s mind-set. In this updated edition of George’s riveting account, he illuminates the many sides of Manson: charismatic cult leader, master manipulator, calculated “showman,” sly trickster, and more. George and his coauthor, Dary Matera, begin by detailing the troubling events of Manson’s youth, the historic 1969 murders, and the subsequent trial that ended an era. They then pull back the curtain on the intense reality of Manson’s turbulent life behind bars and the events that have transpired since the initial publication of this book in 1999, including Manson’s death in 2017. Originally published as Taming the Beast: Charles Manson’s Life Behind Bars Praise for Taming the Beast “A valuable book which gives additional insights into the criminal mind of Charles Manson.” —Vincent Bugliosi, author of Helter Skelter “Charles Manson may be the most written about, commercially viable malefactor in American history, yet George and Matera offer a worthwhile new take on him in their jailhouse bio. . . . George came to know Manson’s whole rollicking gang in scary and intimate detail. He strives to understand Manson and his devotees and, spewing psychological and spiritual insights and plenty of witchy Masonoid details, succeeds in horrifying his readers.” —Booklist “What distinguishes George’s book is that it puts a human face on a man whose very name defines evil—revealing the personality hidden during television interviews.” —Alameda Journal “An ugly, ugly look at a man whose entire life has been a study in sickness. . . . Provide[s] a chilling glimpse of Family members like Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, who showed up at the prison regularly in her red cape.” —Kirkus Reviews

A journalist's twenty-year fascination with the Manson murders leads to "gobsmacking" (The Ringer) new revelations about the FBI's involvement in this "kaleidoscopic" (The New York Times) reassessment of an infamous case in American history. Over two grim nights in Los Angeles, the young followers of Charles Manson murdered seven people, including the actress Sharon Tate, then eight months pregnant. With no mercy and seemingly no motive, the Manson Family followed their leader's every order -- their crimes lit a flame of paranoia across the nation, spelling the end of the sixties. Manson became one of history's most infamous criminals, his name forever attached to an era when charlatans mixed with prodigies, free love was as possible as brainwashing, and utopia -- or dystopia -- was just an acid trip away. Twenty years ago, when journalist Tom O'Neill was reporting a magazine piece about the murders, he worried there was nothing new to say. Then he unearthed shocking evidence of a cover-up behind the "official" story, including police carelessness, legal misconduct, and potential surveillance by intelligence agents. When a tense interview with Vincent Bugliosi -- prosecutor of the Manson Family and author of Helter Skelter -- turned a friendly source into a nemesis, O'Neill knew he was onto something. But every discovery brought more questions: Who were Manson's real friends in Hollywood, and how far would they go to hide their ties? Why didn't law enforcement, including Manson's own parole officer, act on their many chances to stop him? And how did Manson -- an illiterate ex-con -- turn a group of peaceful hippies into remorseless killers? O'Neill's quest for the truth led him from reclusive celebrities to seasoned spies, from San Francisco's summer of love to the shadowy sites of the CIA's mind-control experiments, on a trail rife with shady cover-ups and suspicious coincidences. The product of two decades of reporting, hundreds of new interviews, and dozens of never-before-seen documents from the LAPD, the FBI, and the CIA, Chaos mounts an argument that could be, according to Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney Steven Kay, strong enough to overturn the verdicts on the Manson murders. This is a book that overturns our understanding of a pivotal time in American history.

The Untold Story of the Manson Family Murders from Manson's Final Interviews "I didn't have anything to do with killing those people. They knew I didn't have anything to do with it. They didn't want to hear it..." For 50 years the legendary Manson Family murders have fascinated and mortified that such brutal acts of cold-blooded murder could have taken place and with women playing a key role in those murders. Manson was an enigmatic drifter who drew a group of people into his web of deceit and evil that eventually led to the brutal Tate, and then LaBianca murders. The prosecution would go on to spin what was considered the de-facto theory behind the murder spree and the world bought into the "Helter Skelter" racial war conspiracy. Now for the first time, documentary film producer and author James Buddy Day takes readers through a more rational and believable set of reasons for the murders. James Buddy Day was the last person and author to have interviewed Charles Manson. The reader will be intrigued on Manson's perspective on how the prosecution convicted him for murder when he was forty miles away when both the acts were committed. The book will appeal to readers searching for facts and truths about the most iconic mass murder in the 20th century. You will get to know Manson through the pages of this book. Descriptions and interviews are very graphic, and the material may not be suitable for all readers.

"Creepy crawling" was the Manson Family's practice of secretly entering 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 cultural life for close to fifty years, firmly lodging themselves in our minds. Even now, it is almost impossible to discuss the sixties, teenage runaways, sexuality, drugs, music, California, and even the concept of family without referencing Manson and his "girls." Not just another history of Charles Manson, Creepy Crawling explores how the Family weren't so much outsiders but emblematic of the Los Angeles counterculture freak scene, and how Manson worked to connect himself 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 recent TV show Aquarius, 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.