It’s easier in some ways to say what Howard Bloom isn’t than what he is. He’s not dull, for starters. Talking to him gave me the same sense of drinking from a fire hose that I experienced talking to Camille Paglia, who is one of the only people I have ever met who could give him a run for his money for sheer verbal fluency. He’s not someone whose existence you could believe in him if he wasn’t real, either. In fact, when I first heard about him, I thought “there’s just no way all those things can be true.”
But they are.
His first and longest lasting love has been science. At sixteen, he worked as a research assistant studying the immune system at the Roswell Park Memorial Research Cancer Institute. While attending NYU, he edited an art magazine, to substantial critical acclaim, then an underground rock magazine (even though he knew very little, to begin with, about rock), and then head of public relations at ABC, working for Simon & Garfunkel, Michael Jackson, the Talking Heads, AC/DC, and Bob Marley (among many others). In 1985 the acts he handled grossed a third of a billion dollars.
He’s also cofounded and chaired the Asian Space Technology Summit and serves on the board of the National Space Society.
We talked about many things: the perils of his isolated childhood, his severe bout of chronic fatigue syndrome, his interest in ecstatic collective experiences – and we barely scratched the surface.
He’s written six books:
How I Accidentally Started the Sixties (2017): an autobiographical work charting a decade of revolution and chaos: Amazon USA (http://amzn.to/2jDbZnd); Amazon Can (http://amzn.to/2i723lk)
The Muhammad Code (2016), his controversial work on Islam and terrorism: Amazon USA (http://amzn.to/2jCAGQz); Amazon Can (http://amzn.to/2i9w0RZ)
The God Problem (2012): how a Godless cosmos creates: Amazon USA (http://amzn.to/2AoZBit); Amazon Can (http://amzn.to/2jCQ8vP)
The Genius of the Beast (2009), his radical revisioning of capitalism: Amazon USA (http://amzn.to/2Akj6uH); Amazon Can (http://amzn.to/2kdyWRM)
Global Brain (2001), about the deep evolutionary roots of the mass mind: Amazon USA (http://amzn.to/2i6F2yX); Amazon Can (http://amzn.to/2jE4GLJ)
The Lucifer Principle (1997), about history, biology and evil: Amazon USA (http://amzn.to/2i73rV4); Amazon Can (http://amzn.to/2jE4KuX)
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