PRIME GREEN opens during Robert Stone's last year in the Navy, when he took part in operation Deep Freeze 3, an Anarctic trip that involved circumnavigating the globe. Once out of the Navy, Stone worked for the old New York Daily News and started school at NYU. He started hanging out at the Cedar Tavern just to be in the same room as Kline and DeKooning.

From there they drifted to the French Quarter of New Orleans, where they tried to make a living reading poetry to jazz and working for the Census Bureau. Eventually, in 1962, they went to California, where Ken Kesey had just finished participating in the LSD experiments that were to contribute to the age of psychedelia. Stone experienced the mid–60s of The Merry Pranksters and The Grateful Dead first–hand, accompanied by heavy doses of psychedelics. He travelled for a time on Kesey's celebrated Furthur bus tour, and experienced his 'Acid Test' parties that were later detailed in Tom Wolfe's "The Electric Kool–Aid Acid Test". The book closes in Vietnam, where Stone witnessed the invasion of Laos as a correspondent for a counter–cultural publication.

A powerful memoir, PRIME GREEN, provides an insiders look at a time many knew about only distantly. Stone's expertise as a novelist has helped him here, in his first book–length work of non–fiction, to forge a moving and adventurous portrait of a unique moment in American history.