Manufacturer: St. Martin's Griffin
With personages from Khun Sa to
Coleridge to Kurt Cobain populating its far-ranging pages, Opium: A History provides a comprehensive look at the drug as it's been used, abused, fought over, and profited from throughout the millennia. In all likelihood, one of the first medicinal drugs known to mankind, opium and
its derivatives have eased and caused suffering in almost equal measure, a fact that the evenhanded Booth takes pains to point out. In fact, he quotes rock musician Frank Zappa with approbation: "A drug is neither moral nor immoral-it's a chemical compound. The compound itself is not a menace to society until a human being treats it as if consumption bestowed a temporary license to…
Sleep and his brother Death figure prominently in Martin Booth's "Opium - A History." His subject is a two-headed god-bringing surcease from pain, but also addicting and killing its too-faithful… Booth deals with the suject matter of this book in a logical and tactical manner. The focus of the book is not mainly the mystery of the subject at hand but also
its influence upon British and…
