The following titles may be of particular interest. All are for sale in the Wellcome Collection branch of Blackwell.

High Society: Mind-altering drugs in history and culture by Mike Jay
Blackwell price: £16.95* (RRP: £18.95)

'High Society' explores the spectrum of drug use across the globe and throughout history, from its roots in animal intoxication to its future in designer neurochemicals. Designed to accompany the 'High Society' exhibition, and beautifully illustrated with rarely seen material from the museums collections, this striking, lyrical book puts its controversial subject into the widest possible context.

Writing on Drugs by Sadie Plant
RRP: £9.99

Narcotics, stimulants and hallucinogens...these drugs have always affected far more than the perceptions, minds and moods of their users. 'Writing on Drugs' explores the profound and pervasive nature of their influence on contemporary culture. It reads Coleridge on opium, Freud on cocaine, Michaux on mescaline and Burroughs on them all, and with such writers it begins to understand the many ways in which the modern world has found itself on drugs.

Emperors of Dreams: Drugs in the nineteenth century by Mike Jay
Blackwell price: £8.99 (RRP: £9.99)

Coleridge and de Quincey swilling bitter draughts of opium, Sigmund Freud and Sherlock Holmes dallying with cocaine, Baudelaire and Gautier rapt in hashish fantasies behind velvet curtains, even Queen Victoria swallowing her prescription dose of cannabis - these snapshot images are familiar, but what is the story that lies behind them? How did cannabis and cocaine, opium and ether, mushrooms and mescaline enter the modern world, and what was their impact on the 19th century's dreams and nightmares?

'Emperors of Dreams' tells the stories of how all these substances were first discovered, and paints a fresh and startling picture both of today's illicit drugs and of the 19th century. It shows that the age of Empire and Victorian values was awash with legal narcotics, stimulants and psychedelics, and traces their progress through the rapidly evolving worlds of science and colonial expansion, the demi-mondes of popular subculture and literary bohemia, and the rising tide of temperance and prohibition.

Drugs: A very short introduction by Leslie Iversen
RRP: £7.99 (included in Blackwell's 3 for 2 offer)

This book gives a non-technical account of how drugs work in the body. The 20th century saw a remarkable upsurge of research on drugs, with major advances in the treatment of bacterial and viral infections, heart disease, stomac ulcers, cancer, and metal illnesses. These, along with the introduction of the oral contraceptive, have altered all of our lives. There has also been an increase in the recreational use and abuse of drugs in the Western world. The book reviews both legal (alcohol, nicotine, and caffeine) and illegal drugs and discusses current idea about why some are addictive, and whether drug laws need reform.

Addiction: A disorder of choice by Gene M Heyman
Blackwell price: £12.95 (RRP: £13.95)

In a book sure to inspire controversy, Gene Heyman argues that conventional wisdom about addiction - that it is a disease, a compulsion beyond conscious control - is wrong. Drawing on psychiatric epidemiology, addicts' autobiographies, treatment studies and advances in behavioural economics, Heyman makes a powerful case that addiction is voluntary. He shows that drug use, like all choices, is influenced by preferences and goals. But just as there are successful dieters, there are successful ex-addicts. In fact, addiction is the psychiatric disorder with the highest rate of recovery. But what ends an addiction?

At the heart of Heyman's analysis is a startling view of choice and motivation that applies to all choices, not just the choice to use drugs. The conditions that promote quitting a drug addiction include new information, cultural values and, of course, the costs and benefits of further drug use. Most of us avoid becoming drug dependent not because we are especially rational, but because we loathe the idea of being an addict.

Heyman's analysis of well-established but frequently ignored research leads to unexpected insights into how we make choices, all rooted in our deep-seated tendency to consume too much of whatever we like best. As wealth increases and technology advances, the dilemma posed by addictive drugs spreads to new products. However, this remarkable and radical book points to a solution. If drug addicts typically beat addiction, then non-addicts can learn to control their natural tendency to take too much.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll (illustrations by Mervyn Peake)
RRP: £8.99

Lewis Carroll's 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' and 'Through the Looking Glass' have captivated the imagination of adults and children alike since they first appeared more than a hundred years ago. Since that time many artists have attempted to capture their dreamlike combination of impossible events, precise detail and weird logic. Mervyn Peake is one of the few to have succeeded.

Famed worldwide for his Gormenghast trilogy, Mervyn Peake was also an illustrator of rare and wondrous talent, whose editions of 'Treasure Island' and 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' are universally admired. In the 1940s, he was commissioned to produce a set of 70 pen-and-ink drawings to accompany Lewis Carroll's two classics, 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' and 'Through the Looking-Glass', and they are among his best work as an illustrator. These extraordinary illustrations, many of which were drawn on poor-quality wartime paper, have been restored to their former clarity and crispness by a combination of old-fashioned craft and the latest computer technology, and have been meticulously reproduced as they were meant to be seen. This exquisite two-volume set, pubished by Bloomsbury, is the first edition to do justice to two great English eccentrics.

Confessions of an English Opium-eater by Thomas De Quincey
RRP: £6.99 (included in Blackwell's 3 for 2 offer)

'Confessions of an English Opium-eater' is an account of the early life and opium addiction of Thomas De Quincey, in prose that is by turns witty, conversational and nightmarish. 'On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth' offers both a small masterpiece of Shakespearian interpretation and a provocative statement of De Quincey's personal aesthetic of contrast and counterpoint. 'Suspiria de Profundis' blends autobiography and philosophical speculation into a series of dazzling prose-poems which explore the mysteries of time, memory, and suffering. 'The English Mail-Coach' develops a richly apocalyptic vision which sets 19th-century England's political and imperial grandeur against the suffering and loss of innocence that it entails. This selection presents De Quincey's major works in their original uncut and unrevised versions, which in some cases have not been available for many years.

On Wine and Hashish by Charles Baudelaire
RRP: £7.99

'On Wine and Hashish' asserts the ambivalence of memory, urging a union of willpower and sensual pleasure as Baudelaire claims that wine and hashish bring about an escape of narrative time. This characteristic theme anticipates his famous prose poems, 'Le Spleen de Paris', in which drunkenness - as provided by wine, poetry, or virtue - is celebrated in remarkable style.

 

Image: Illustration by Mervyn Peake of the caterpillar from 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'. Reproduced by kind permission of the Mervyn Peake estate.

* Blackwell Price applies to Wellcome Collection branch only.