Potentially Fascinating Subject, Wrung Out

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	• Opium: A History Martin Booth St. Martin's Griffin, 1999 - 400 pages average customer review:based on 14 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

What You Didn't Know About Opium...

"Opium: A History" by Martin Booth is an engrossing work of nonfiction that details human reliance on opium for thousands upon thousands of years and how it has affected us physically, emotionally, economically, and morally.

The book starts with a discussion on the poppy flower itself and how opium is derived from the plant's sap and ending on the efforts of international traffickers, government enforcement agencies, and doctors alike in either expanding or eradicating addiction to opium. In between, you will learn about opium's horrible effects on the body, Britain's establishment of the opium trade in China and later efforts to destroy it (counter to the rest of the world's reliance on opium to support their economies), the transformation of opium to heroin, the use of opium to inspire artists around the world, and the quiet and insidious opium trade that goes on with the permission of many governments to support war efforts and other international issues.

To me, the most fascinating thing I learned from this book was the amount of people addicted to the drug in the past because it was such an important painkiller/medicine and because it helped quiet fussy babies. You can't help finish this book and wonder if it is even possible to win a war against a drug that has shaped the lives of so many humans and so many societies for thousands of years.

I personally found the book easy to read, though I preferred the first two-thirds of the book. This part of the book covered the drug itself, its health affects, and its early history up to the nineteenth century. I wasn't as interested in the international trafficking part of the book (the last one-third), probably because so many people, organizations, and countries were mentioned that I lost track of which country was fighting who and who was doing what with heroin or opium. Still, the book is an eye-opening read. The excruciating description of opium withdrawal should be mandatory reading for high school kids to help stymie any attempt at trying the drug.

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impeccable

I borrowed this book from a colleague of mine and was glad I did. This book is impeccably researched and provides fascinating insight into the history of opium -- the cultures it created and destroyed and the effects it had on people, science and civilization. A little slow in the beginning with the biological history, but still a must-read.

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Excellent history

This book gives an interesting history of opium and its effects both emotionally and economically on the regions of the world where it grows and is processed. A trip to Laos got me interested in the subject matter. The book is very good at giving an historical perspective on the scourage of the region.

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"highly" recommended!!!!

As with his other book, Cannabis: A History, Martin Booth gives a definitive guide to Opium!!!!!! This book traces opium to ancient times and follows its progress throughout history... as technology progresses...new discoveries leading to extracting new derivatives from opium are found.... the destructive force of the opium wars and many more are explained...

Potentially Fascinating Subject, Wrung Out

The history of opium is a very interesting subject, as Martin Booth initially proves here. Dating from the earliest days of human civilization, opium use has gone through many stages of glamorization and condemnation, while entire nations and peoples have been held in its sway. Unfortunately, after a fascinating start this book wrings out most of the interesting aspects of this subject. Booth's writing shows the British tendency toward dryness and tedium, with an often anal-retentive obsession for small details at the expense of big picture conclusions, especially regarding the personal human effects of the use of opium and its modern derivatives like heroin. Booth makes many dubious generalizations about popular culture, crime communities, and ethnic groups - an example is the claim that American blacks from the south who emigrated to the north took up heroin en masse because they disliked the winters. Booth's very few glimmers of personality occur only when he indignantly criticizes some of his sources, calling one an ignorant bigot and another a pious zealot while quoting them. Most of the final third of the book really drags with tedious drug war reporting on the modern heroin trade. Other reviewers have noticed Booth's complete lack of footnotes and citations, and this is a real issue as his credibility is often stretched by opinionating and speculation. Overall, a potentially fascinating subject is made boring.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3

Known to mankind since prehistoric times, opium is arguably the oldest and most widely used narcotic. Opium: A History traces the drug's astounding impact on world culture-from its religious use by prehistoric peoples to its influence on the imaginations of the Romantic writers; from the earliest medical science to the Sino-British opium wars. And, in the present day, as the addict population rises and penetrates every walk of life, Opium shows how the international multibillion-dollar heroin industry operates with terrifying efficiency and forms an integral part of the world's money markets.

In this first full-length history of opium, acclaimed author Martin Booth uncovers the multifaceted nature of this remarkable narcotic and the bittersweet effects of a simple poppy with a deadly legacy.

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