Win the Grateful Dead Fan Mail Art Book ‘Dead Letters’

A free copy of a new photo book collecting hundreds of lovingly decorated envelopes covered in Grateful Dead artwork, 'Dead Letters: The Very Best Grateful Dead Fan Mail,' is up for grabs courtesy of Voyageur Press and Ultimate Classic Rock.

See, children, back in the days before the internet, the best way for Grateful Dead fans to buy concert tickets was to order them directly from the band via good old U.S. Mail. So you had a lot of hippies staring at a lot of blank white envelopes, possibly while high, and that means there was some serious doodling going on.

OK just joking, in most cases they hoped their creative work would inspire the ticket staff to choose their request over other would-be attendees, seeing as how demand nearly always outstripped the supply.

Over the years, the Dead have saved tens of thousands of these artfully decorated envelopes, and now all those unique pieces of art have been gathered in one place. You'll see lots of skeletons, vans and dancing bears, and sometimes you'll wonder how the mail carrier was able to discern the address amid all the colorful decorations.

Author and "Dead Head of all Dead Heads" Paul Grushkin uses over 300 examples of these envelopes to serve as your guide through the history of the Grateful Dead, dividing the works into thematic chapters and offering text, photographs and assorted memorabilia to help fill in the story. You can learn more about the book here, but rest assured, any Dead fan is going to love this, and all you have to do to win your own copy is to sign up below: