Pursuit of Oblivion: A Global History of Narcotics

In this elegant and uniquely comprehensive history of drugs and their role in society, award-winning historian Richard Davenport-Hines examines how licit medicines developed into the commodity of a huge illicit business which generates annually as much money as the oil industry. Melding social, political, and cultural history, The Pursuit of Oblivion illustrates that intoxication is neither unnatural nor deviant, and it describes how for thousands of years human beings have taken substances to change their physical or emotional state.