Flowers in the Blood: The Story of Opium

“An irreverent, exuberant, and sometimes eminently sensible” history of opium throughout the world with an introduction by William Burroughs (Kirkus Reviews). Opium has a long and varied history that spans the globe. In Flowers in the Blood, Jeff Goldberg and Dean Latimer chronicle the complete history of the drug. They include the formulas for Hippocrates’s ancient opium remedies, to what really provoked the Opium Wars in China, and the role opium played in the birth of the American labor movement. The authors provide details of the addictions of S. T. Coleridge, Thomas De Quincey, and other literary opium-eaters of the nineteenth century, as well as chronicling the progress of antidrug laws and the ongoing search for an addiction cure. Originally published in 1981, Flowers in the Blood is “the best . . . on the full history of the drug” (Whittier Daily News). This edition has been updated with a new preface by Goldberg.