Rating:
(3 reviews)
Author: Mike Jay
ISBN : 1594773939
New from $11.00
Format: PDF, EPUB
Posts about Download The Book Free Download High Society: The Central Role of Mind-Altering Drugs in History, Science, and Culture from with Mediafire Link Download Link
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 that made the modern world
• Examines the causes of drug prohibitions a century ago and the current “war on drugs”
Every society is a high society. Every day people drink coffee on European terraces and kava in Pacific villages; chew betel nut in Indonesian markets and coca leaf on Andean mountainsides; swallow ecstasy tablets in the clubs of Amsterdam and opium pills in the deserts of Rajastan; smoke hashish in Himalayan temples and tobacco and marijuana in every nation on earth.
Exploring the spectrum of drug use throughout history--from its roots in animal intoxication to its future in designer neurochemicals--High Society paints vivid portraits of the roles drugs play in different cultures as medicines, religious sacraments, status symbols, and coveted trade goods. From the botanicals of the classical world through the mind-bending self-experiments of 18th- and 19th-century scientists to the synthetic molecules that have transformed our understanding of the brain, Mike Jay reveals how drugs such as tobacco, tea, and opium drove the global trade and cultural exchange that created the modern world and examines the forces that led to the prohibition of opium and cocaine a century ago and the “war on drugs” that rages today.
Books with free ebook downloads available Free Download High Society: The Central Role of Mind-Altering Drugs in History, Science, and Culture [Paperback]
- Paperback: 192 pages
- Publisher: Park Street Press; 1 edition (October 19, 2010)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1594773939
- ISBN-13: 978-1594773938
- Product Dimensions: 0.7 x 6.5 x 9.2 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Free Download High Society: The Central Role of Mind-Altering Drugs in History, Science, and Culture
Neither a dry academic treatise nor a strident advocacy, Jay's book is a very well-illustrated cultural and historical survey of the use of natural, purified, and synthesized psychoactive substances by every society around the globe, from deep rain forests to mountain peaks, from modern cities to desert oases. The book follows the exhibit under the same title presented at the famous Wellcome Collection in History of Medicine in London, England. Besides the spiritual and religious use (entheogens), the consumption of such agents have been social lubricants and glues, creative stimulants for artists, poets, and writers, relaxants, pharmacologically useful sleep-inducers and painkillers, and scientific tools in studying brain and mind. The pleasure and curiosity of consciousness-altering plants are not just human activities, for birds and mammals are known to seek them. Those groups and societies that attempted to eliminate all mind-altering substances were stagnant, staid, anxious, and short-lived. Islam may have forbidden alcohol consumption but coffee, tea, and tobacco in turn took its place. Even sugar and chocolate have been sought for its psychotropic effects. The story of this psychobiological need is fascinatingly told, and the historical color images enhance the discussion. I found particularly interesting the first specific book on psychoactive plants: Carl Linnaeus, the pioneer taxonomist, wrote Inebriantia in 1762. Betel-Areca nut preparations, kava, coca, khat, tobacco, ayuhuasca, peyote, psilocybin mushroom, opium, cannabis, tea, coffee, alcohol, nitrous oxide, LSD, MMDA (ecstasy), and other agents have been used (and sometimes abused), both prescribed, and proscribed. Government-supported industry and underground industry developing and trading these agents have a long history.
-
Download Link 2