A provocative and original history of the scientists and writers, artists and philosophers who took drugs to explore the hidden regions of the mindA New Yorker Best of the Week Pick**“Jay is a leading expert on the history of Western drug use, and Psychonauts is the latest in a series of excellent studies in which he has investigated the roots of a kind of psychoactive exploration that we tend to associate with the ninetee...

400 years ago this November the most ambitious and extraordinary plot ever conceived in this country came close to success: the attempt by Guy Fawkes and his fellow conspirators to destroy in a single, annihilating blast the entire British ruling class and royal family.This book draws on the expertise of different writers to bring to life the immense implications of the Plot and the strange way they have echoed down to us over four centuries in what remains the quintessential Engli...

This is the remarkable story of James Lee who, starting in 1895, spent 20 years pursuing all the pleasures and dangers that the Far East had to offer. A twilight world of ports, red light districts,drug dens and secret chambers of vice from Aden to Kyoto.

A compelling and evocatively illustrated exploration of the evolution of the asylum, and its role in society over the course of four centuriesThis Way Madness Lies is a thought-provoking exploration of the history of madness and its treatment as seen through the lens of its proverbial home: Bethlem Royal Hospital, London, popularly known as Bedlam. The book charts the evolution of the asylum through four incarnations: the eighteenth-century madhouse, the n...

The world has ended and the devil is riding high into town. Join him on his journey to the west

Zoey fell into a world she knew nothing about and was embarrassed to talk about. No matter who was out there she could feel the claws of something gripping around her and slowly closing around her kneck

An illustrated cultural history of drug use from its roots in animal intoxication to its future in designer neurochemicals• Featuring artwork from the upcoming High Society exhibition at the Wellcome Collection in London, one of the world’s greatest medical history collections• Explores the roles drugs play in different cultures as medicines, religious sacraments, status symbols, and coveted trade goods• Reveals how drugs drove the global trade and cultural exchange...

Harold Jarman is a Bristol-born sporting legend. A highly talented winger for Bristol Rovers, he made almost 500 League appearances for the club, scoring over a century of goals. Although he has taken on many different roles for clubs in the UK and the United States, his heart has always belonged to Bristol – he returned initially as youth team manager, then caretaker manager (saving the Rovers from relegation) before coaching and managing the youth and reserve te...

Bristol Rovers' most famous player is undoubtedly Geoff Bradford. He holds the club record for goals scored (242 in 461 Football League appearances) and remains the only player to win a Full England International cap while with the club. To research this book, the authors have been given access to an archive of information and original photographs from his family. Bristol-born Geoff was a loyal one-club man having turned down the option of a transfer to First Division Live...

This is the true story of Colonel Edward Marcus Despard, the character in the fifth series of the BBC's popular television drama Poldark.Colonel Despard was the last person to be sentenced to hanging, drawing and quartering in Britain - for high treason, an alleged plot to kill the king. His execution on 21st February 1803 was witnessed by twenty thousand hushed onlookers. Their silence was ominous, for few believed he was guilty. His death would tear apar...

A gripping true tale of madness, technology, politics, and paranoia in Georgian England.Confined in Bedlam in 1797 as an incurable lunatic, James Tilly Matthews’s case is one of the most bizarre in the annals of psychiatry. He was the first person to insist that his mind was being controlled by a machine: the Air Loom, a terrifying secret weapon whose mesmeric rays and mysterious gases were brainwashing politicians and plunging Europe into revolution, terror and wa...

A definitive history of mescaline that explores its mind-altering effects across cultures, from ancient America to Western modernityMescaline became a popular sensation in the mid-twentieth century through Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception, after which the word “psychedelic” was coined to describe it. Its story, however, extends deep into prehistory: the earliest Andean cultures depicted mescaline-containing cacti in their temples.Mescaline w...