Book description
A history of drug-taking, telling the story across five centuries of
addicts and users: monarchs, prime ministers, great writers and
composers, wounded soldiers, overworked physicians, oppressed
housewives, exhausted labourers, high-powered businessmen, playboys, sex
workers, pop stars, seedy losers, stressed adolescents, defiant
schoolchildren, the victims of the ghetto, and happy young people on a spree.
It is also the history of one bad idea, prohibition. 'Everyone with
any influence on government policy should read this book and wake up
before it is too late' Richard Davenport-Hines is a past winner of the
Wolfson Prize for History and contributes regularly to the TLS, Sunday
Times, Independent and Nature.
