The Acid Queen
The Acid Queen by Susannah Cahalan is one of 2026's most credible books, appearing on 1 of the year's most respected lists, including The Guardian, for a Consensus Score of 16 out of 100.
Appears on these lists
Our take
AI-draftedCahalan's subject has spent decades as a footnote to Timothy Leary, the wife who went underground, helped him escape prison, then vanished from the counterculture's official memory. The biography's achievement is refusing to let Rosemary Woodruff Leary stay a supporting character: it treats her own political radicalization, her years as a fugitive, and her later self-erasure as a story worth telling on its own terms. It's less a psychedelia romp than a study of what it costs a woman to be written out of a movement she helped build.
In the press
“A well-wrought narrative that brings deserved attention to a lost figure in the counterculture.”
Kirkus Reviews“An electric account of a remarkable life and the end of an era.”
Publishers Weekly
How the Consensus Score is calculated
Our Consensus Score is our own transparent editorial metric — not a user rating. It weighs each list by the credibility of its source, how recent the listing is, and any award status. Here is the full breakdown.
| Source | Authority | Recency | Award | Contribution |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Guardian | 0.85 | 0.85 | 1.00× | 0.72 |
| Weighted sum → Score | 0.72 → 16 | |||
Similar consensus books
Because they appear on some of the same lists.
Frequently asked
What lists is The Acid Queen on?
The Acid Queen appears on 1 list in our 2026 corpus, including The Guardian.
What is its Consensus Score?
The Acid Queen has a Consensus Score of 16 out of 100, our transparent editorial measure of how many credible lists agree on it.