Synopsis
This Is Burning Man: The Rise of a New American Underground by Brian Doherty is a comprehensive and immersive cultural history of the iconic Burning Man festival, tracing its evolution from a spontaneous ritual among a small group of San Francisco friends to a massive annual gathering that draws tens of thousands to the remote Black Rock Desert in Nevada each year. Doherty, a senior editor at Reason magazine and a veteran attendee since 1995, blends meticulous journalism with personal memoir to capture the event's chaotic essence, drawing on interviews with over 100 participants, organizers, and artists to recount how the simple act of burning a wooden effigy in 1986 ignited a movement rooted in radical self-expression, anti-commercialism, and communal creativity. The book begins with the festival's humble origins on Baker Beach, where Larry Harvey, a landscape architect disillusioned with modern life, and his friend Jerry James constructed and torched an eight-foot wooden man as a cathartic gesture amid the summer solstice sunset, inspired not by ancient rituals like the Wicker Man but by a desire for something primal and shared. This initial burn, attended by just a handful of people, quickly grew through word-of-mouth and repeat gatherings, evolving into a larger spectacle by 1987 with a fifteen-foot effigy that took weeks to build, symbolizing a fellowship of carpenters and seekers escaping the constraints of urban existence.
As Doherty delves deeper, he explores the pivotal role of the Cacophony Society, a loose collective of San Francisco anarchists and performance artists including John Law, who infused the event with absurdist flair and helped relocate it to the vast, empty Black Rock Playa in 1990 after beach burns faced police interference and logistical challenges. This move to the desert transformed Burning Man into a self-reliant experiment in temporary urbanism, where participants erected Black Rock City—a semicircular metropolis complete with streets, theme camps, and a central playa for art installations—adhering to principles like radical inclusion, gifting, and decommodification, where money is banned and commerce is replaced by barter and communal effort. The narrative vividly details the early years' wild, unregulated energy, marked by near-disasters such as failed effigy raisings, dust storms that buried camps, and ecstatic rituals involving fire, nudity, and performance art, all while highlighting key figures like Danger Ranger, who founded the Black Rock Rangers for informal mediation, and the Department of Public Works (DPW), a ragtag crew of volunteers who build infrastructure and clean up afterward to leave no trace. Doherty recounts iconic moments, such as the 1996 "Zone Trip" expeditions that tested the desert's limits, and the influx of ravers, tech entrepreneurs, and suburban families in the late 1990s, turning the event into a melting pot of hippies, punks, academics, and gearheads who collaborate on massive, ephemeral sculptures like flame-spewing lotus flowers, glowing white whales navigating the starry sky, or a three-story temple pieced together from discarded dinosaur puzzles.
The book doesn't shy away from the festival's darker undercurrents, including internal conflicts among founders—such as the 1996 schism when John Law and others left due to disputes over commercialization and control, leading to the formation of the Black Rock Arts Foundation—and external pressures like federal regulations, law enforcement crackdowns, and environmental concerns from the Bureau of Land Management. Doherty examines how Burning Man navigated these tensions, evolving from a freewheeling bacchanal where drugs, sex, and destruction reigned unchecked—exemplified by events like playing golf with burning toilet paper rolls or a man dancing in a metal suit amid a Tesla coil's electricity—to a more structured nonprofit entity by the early 2000s, complete with admission fees up to $250 and a $6 million budget, which some purists decried as a sellout of its underground roots. Through personal anecdotes from his four pre-writing attendances, Doherty conveys the physical and emotional toll of the playa: the brutal heat, alkaline dust that infiltrates everything, and the profound "holy moments" of epiphany amid the whimsy and absurdity, where participants confront isolation, purposelessness, and the thrill of unbridled creativity. He reflects on philosophical ties to 1960s counterculture figures like Ken Kesey, portraying Burning Man as a bulldozer through "consensual reality," fostering a neotribal revival that challenges societal norms while emphasizing self-reliance and participation over spectatorship.I
n the 10th anniversary edition, Doherty adds a 5,000-word afterword updating the narrative through the 2010s, noting how attendance swelled beyond 60,000, incorporating themes like environmentalism and technology while grappling with criticisms of elitism and overregulation, yet retaining its core as a subversive space for personal transformation. Critics have praised the book for its well-researched depth and engaging prose, though some note its gushing tone and insider bias make it less accessible to outsiders, akin to insisting "you had to be there." Ultimately, This Is Burning Man serves as both a loving tribute and a cautionary tale of how an underground phenomenon can scale without losing its incendiary soul, inviting readers—whether veterans reminiscing or newcomers intrigued—to ponder the festival's enduring appeal as a radical antidote to conformity in American culture.