Charles Manson was an unlikely messiah. Freshly paroled, he stumbled into San Francisco in 1967 just as thousands of impressionable young people were streaming into town for the Summer of Love.

Using skills of manipulation he gained in prison, Manson moved to LA and built his own commune cult of hippies, three-quarters of whom were women. He began to control their bodies and minds as they moved from one LA flop to the next, graduating from love and peace to horrific acts of murder and mayhem that shook the world.

This book is a fresh take on the life of Charles Manson from true crime author David J. Krajicek. Centered on the brutal killings of film star Sharon Tate and other victims and set against events of the time-the sexual revolution, the civil rights movement, race riots, space exploration, the music scene of the 1960s-it's the story of Flower Power gone to seed.

David J. Krajicek is a special correspondent for the New York Daily News, to which he contributes the true crime feature 'The Justice Story'. He is the author of many other books and his work has also appeared in the New York Times, Newsday, and The Village Voice.