"The White Album is a mosaic of a time, a mosaic that includes, among other bizarre artifacts and personalities, the dark journeys and impulses of the Manson Family and the Ferguson brothers, the story of Bishop James Pike, and of John Paul Getty's museum, the biker cult, the saga of the California governor's mansions, the romance of water in an arid landscape, the swirl and confusion of th Sixties (the women's movement, the Panthers, Berkeley), and the experience of getting away--to Bogotá, to Las Vegas, the Islands, the road or simply to bed--and coming home again"--Cover.