July 2

July 2 is the birthdate of author Hermann Hesse, who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1946. His ninth book was Siddhartha (1922), published in the United States in 1951. The huge popularity of this book (and others by Hesse) in the United States from the 1960s onward was partly fueled by counter-cultural comments from Dr. Timothy Leary, as well as a legitimate quest for enlightenment among an enlarged population of university students.