"Born to an American mother and a late Afghan war hero-turned-magnate, Daniel Sajadi has spent his life navigating a complex identity. After years in Los Angeles, he is returning home to Kabul for the first time as the head of a US foreign aid agency dedicated to staunching the growth of the poppy fields in Fever Valley that feed the world's opiate epidemic. But on the drive back to Kabul from an anniversary trip with his wife, Rebecca, Daniel hits...

An intelligent and authoritative history of opium--a drug that has both healed and harmed since the beginning of civilization. Poppy tears, opium, heroin, fentanyl: humankind has been in thrall to the "Milk of Paradise" for millennia. The latex of papaver somniferum is a bringer of sleep, of pleasurable lethargy, of relief from pain--and hugely addictive. A commodity without rival, it is renewable, easy to extract, transport, and refine, and subject...

In the nineteenth century, Chinese society was crippled by a vast addiction to opium, which was largely supplied by British traders. For years, the British and Chinese governments had clashed over Britian's right to trade in China and be treated by the Chinese officials as equals. So when China tried to close its ports to opium, the British fought back, starting two of the most bizarre wars in history.

Opium, once used for ritual purposes, is a substance, which dulls pain and offers access to an artificial world, and has long been idealized by artists and markets. Baudelaire, Picasso, and Dickens were all inspired to create by the blue clouds of smoke. Known as either a sacred drug or the worst of poisons, opium rapidly became popular in Great Britain and a source of commerce with Imperial China. This illustrated work presents the history and quasi-religious...

In the mid-19th century, China under the Qing dynasty suffered a series of natural disasters, economic problems, and defeats at the hands of the Western powers-in particular, the humiliating defeat in 1842 by the British in the First Opium War. The war disrupted shipping patterns and threw many out of work. It was these disaffected who flocked to join the charismatic visionary Hong Xiuquan. The sect's power grew in the late 1840s, initially suppressing...

Describes how nineteenth-century British efforts to open China to trade set in motion the fall of the Qing dynasty and started a war that allowed for the rise of nationalism and communism in the twentieth century.

Thomas De Quincey, an English essayist during the turn of the nineteenth century, began life as a fairly sickly child, and would spend much of his life in the grips of one illness or another. Through a series of misguided attempts at getting an education, De Quincey dropped out of college and instead became a vagrant. The youth barely had enough food to eat and resorted to begging in order to survive. These years served as a depressing foundation...

An impossible smuggling route. A smuggler who won't quit Will Adelma's stubbornness bring her success or ruin her life? Adelma has one dream: to set herself up as a smuggler. But as the daughter of a fisherman, that's easier said than done. As she slowly starts to network in the smuggling world, she comes across a man who loudly mocks her looks. What's a self-respecting wannabe smuggler to do? Punch his lights out, of course. Preferably in front...