Eating the flesh of an Egyptian mummy prevents the plague. Distilled poppies reduce melancholy. A Turkish drink called coffee increases alertness. Tobacco cures cancer. Such beliefs circulated in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, an era when the term "drug" encompassed everything from herbs and spices—like nutmeg, cinnamon, and chamomile—to such deadly poisons as lead, mercury, and arsenic. In The Age of Intoxication, Benjamin Breen offers a window into a time when drugs w...

'It was not the Baby Boomers who ushered in the first era of widespread drug experimentation. It was their parents.'The generation that survived the second World War emerged with a profoundly ambitious sense of social experimentation. In the '40s and '50s, transformative drugs rapidly entered mainstream culture, where they were not only legal, but openly celebrated. American physician John C. Lilly infamously dosed dolphins (and himself) with LSD in a NASA-funded effort to teach do...

Eating the flesh of an Egyptian mummy prevents the plague. Distilled poppies reduce melancholy. A Turkish drink called coffee increases alertness. Tobacco cures cancer. Such beliefs circulated in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, an era when the term "drug" encompassed everything from herbs and spices—like nutmeg, cinnamon, and chamomile—to such deadly poisons as lead, mercury, and arsenic. In The Age of Intoxication, Benjamin Breen offers a window into a time when drugs w...

Eating the flesh of an Egyptian mummy prevents the plague. Distilled poppies reduce melancholy. A Turkish drink called coffee increases alertness. Tobacco cures cancer. Such beliefs circulated in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, an era when the term "drug" encompassed everything from herbs and spices—like nutmeg, cinnamon, and chamomile—to such deadly poisons as lead, mercury, and arsenic. In The Age of Intoxication, Benjamin Breen offers a window into a time when drugs w...

**A Los Angeles Times BestsellerOne of The New Yorker's Best Books of 2024A bold and brilliant revisionist take on the history of psychedelics in the twentieth century, illuminating how a culture of experimental drugs shaped the Cold War and the birth of Silicon Valley."Brilliant and original."―Charles King, author of Gods of the Upper Air and Midnight at the Pera Palace**"It was not the Baby Boomers who ushered in the...

**A Los Angeles Times BestsellerOne of The New Yorker's Best Books of 2024A bold and brilliant revisionist take on the history of psychedelics in the twentieth century, illuminating how a culture of experimental drugs shaped the Cold War and the birth of Silicon Valley."Brilliant and original."―Charles King, author of Gods of the Upper Air and Midnight at the Pera Palace**"It was not the Baby Boomers who ushered in the...

You’ve heard of IQ and EQ. But in today's world, they’re no longer enough. We need the Agility Quotient (AQ).“Holistic, practical, and easy to digest (without feeling corporate). If you’re looking for a quick, yet addictive read about how to manage uncertainty, this is one of those books that will make you feel a little more steady.”—theSkimmIn a time defined by nonstop disruptions, when jobs vanish overnight, industries evolve in ...

LONGLISTED FOR THE FINANCIAL TIMES AND SCHRODERS BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD"One of those books that changes the way you see the world. Gripping, urgent, important."ED CONWAY"This wonderful book is as welcome as it is overdue ... shines a much-needed light on this essential topic."RORY SUTHERLAND"A deftly written tale."LEWIS BASTON

LONGLISTED FOR THE FINANCIAL TIMES AND SCHRODERS BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD"One of those books that changes the way you see the world. Gripping, urgent, important."ED CONWAY**"This wonderful book is as welcome as it is overdue ... shines a much-needed light on this essential topic."RORY SUTHERLAND"A deftly written tale."LEWIS BASTON**__________Our obsession with land is the driving force beh...

“The damndest mixing of true crime, memoir, and maybe (?) ghost story I’ve ever read. The original Harper’s article gave me the shivers, and this deeper dive is going to have me looking over my shoulder on every hike. Unputdownable." — Patton OswaltWith the immediacy and extraordinary feeling for people and place of Under the Banner of Heaven and Say Nothing, a compelling true crime story about two young girls who went missing in ...

From Sarah Weinman, author of Scoundrel and The Real Lolita, comes an eye-opening story about the first major spousal rape trial in America and urgent questions it raised about women’s rights that would reverberate for decades.In 1978, Greta Rideout was the first woman in United States history to accuse her husband of rape, at a time when the idea of “marital rape” seemed ludicrous to many Americans and was a crime in only four states. After a qui...

Brought to you by Penguin.Say 'philosopher,' and someone grand, old and bearded might come to mind. But, as philosophy professor Scott Hershovitz shows in this delightful debut, some of the best philosophers in the world are better described as nasty, brutish and short--that is to say, they're children. Children make wonderful philosophers because they constantly question things that grown-ups take for granted, test theories about the people around them, and try to...