Jean-Francois Bizot's book "Free Press: Underground and Alternative Publications, 1965-1975" is a gorgeous history of the paleozines, the underground newspapers spawned by 1960s subculture. The book is huge, so that many of the tabloid pages it reproduces can be shown at full size (as with the full-size reproductions of the Little Nemo strips, it rapidly becomes clear that if you haven't seen these at full-size, you haven't seen them at all).
The book groups its coverage thematically, starting with freak-out lifestyle papers, then militant publications, black power, the birth of the green movement and the proto-punk era. Most of the pages are given over to images, raw pasteups from the pre-desktop-publishing era, but the text really shines, vigorous and angry or funny or sexy, an unfiltered scream.
I've been paging through this book all day. I keep setting it aside and then returning to it. It's spectacular. I just wish the publisher was doing a better job of promoting it. They don't even have the right cover online (the cover shown here isn't the one my copy has) — and this book really needs to have some of the interiors online as well.
See also Posters from Black Panther newspaper covers: 1969-1971
