Aldous Huxley was one of the twentieth century's most prescient thinkers. This new biography charts the phases of Huxley's life and writing: from the early satirist who depicted the glamorous despair of the postwar generation, to the committed pacifist of the 1930s, the spiritual seeker of the 1940s, the psychedelic sage of the 1950s who affirmed the spiritual potential of mescaline and LSD, to the New Age prophet. While Huxley is best-known as the author of Brave New World, Poller argues that it is The Perennial Philosophy, The Doors of Perceptionand Island- Huxley's blueprint for a utopian society- that have had the most impact on culture at large. A rich and lucid account of Huxley's life and work.