They say that in every bar in Vancouver you can find some old guy who claims to be a founder of Greenpeace. Success has many fathers, and the early anti-nuclear testing movement that gave birth to Greenpeace was a meeting of many minds.

But the crew of the first Greenpeace voyage to Amchitka in 1971 are the real stuff, and one of them, Rex Weyler, has written one of the best reads imaginable about what it was like to be a part of the heady, flower-powered core group of mind-bombing hippy peaceniks that got the whole ball rolling.

I've read every history of Greenpeace I could get my hands on, and for my money, this one's the best. As good a collection of great yarns about extraordinary people and events as Bob Hunter's awesome Warriors of the Rainbow, but with a wider lens; one that captures the revolutionary zeal and shifting social forces of the time, the music that was being played and the politics that were coming down. He captures a lot of magic and a lot of fun. But he also deals with the inevitable conflicts between strong-willed individuals hell bent on the modest prospect of changing the world, with an even-handedness and generosity of spirit towards his fellow founders that's pretty amazing.

This is oral history set to print.

To be published in September, you can get a sneak peak here:

Greenpeace: How a Group of Ecologists, Journalists and Visionaries Changed
the World by Rex Weyler (Raincoast, 1-55192-529-X, $39.95 cloth) Published
internationally on 100%, post-consumer, waste-recycled, chlorine-free
paper.

http://www.raincoast.com/greenpeace

And here's an audio transcript of an interview with Rex on msnbc.