Download or read book Opium Tea written by Bianca Tam and published by Tale Weaver. This book was released on 1990-09 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author recounts her life, including her privileged childhood in Italy, her marriage to a Chinese officer, her work spying for the Japanese, and her trial after the war

Download or read book This Is Your Mind On Plants written by Michael Pollan and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2021-07-08 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE INSPIRATION FOR THE MAJOR NEW NETFLIX SERIES, HOW TO CHANGE YOUR MIND 'It's a trip - engrossing, eye-opening, mind altering' New Statesman 'Fascinating. Pollan is the perfect guide ... curious, careful, open minded' The Guardian Of all the many things humans rely on plants for, surely the most curious is our use of them to change consciousness: to stimulate, calm, or completely alter the qualities of our mental experience. In This Is Your Mind On Plants, Michael Pollan explores three very different drugs - opium, caffeine and mescaline - and throws the fundamental strangeness of our thinking about them into sharp relief. Exploring and participating in the cultures that have grown up around these drugs, while consuming (or in the case of caffeine, trying not to consume) them, Pollan reckons with the powerful human attraction to psychoactive plants, and the equally powerful taboos. In a unique blend of history, science, memoir and reportage, Pollan shines a fresh light on a subject that is all too often treated reductively. In doing so, he proves that there is much more to say about these plants than simply debating their regulation, for when we take them into our bodies and let them change our minds, we are engaging with nature in one of the most profound ways we can. This ground-breaking and singular book holds up a mirror to our fundamental human needs and aspirations, the operations of our minds and our entanglement with the natural world.

Download or read book Opium for the Masses written by Jim Hogshire and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Opium. Known as 'The Mother of All Analgesics,' it's probably the greatest pain killer ever discovered. Opium is the parent of morphine, heroin, laudanum, Darvocet, Darvon, and many other pain relievers. Opium causes poets to rhapsodize and nations to go to war. 'Religion... is the opium of the people,' said Karl Marx, but some people insist on the real thing. In Opium for the Masses, Jim Hogshire tells you everything you want to know about the beloved poppy and its amazing properties [...] As he reveals the secrets of the seductive opium poppy, he tells the sad story of prescription drugs: doctors, drug makers and governments prohibiting natural remedies in favor of harsh synthetic derivatives. Opium for the Masses includes rare photographs and detailed illustrations that bring this magnificent plant to life."--From cover.

Download or read book Empire of Tea written by Markman Ellis and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2015-06-15 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although tea had been known and consumed in China and Japan for centuries, it was only in the seventeenth century that Londoners first began drinking it. Over the next two hundred years, its stimulating properties seduced all of British society, as tea found its way into cottages and castles alike. One of the first truly global commodities and now the world’s most popular drink, tea has also, today, come to epitomize British culture and identity. This impressively detailed book offers a rich cultural history of tea, from its ancient origins in China to its spread around the world. The authors recount tea’s arrival in London and follow its increasing salability and import via the East India Company throughout the eighteenth century, inaugurating the first regular exchange—both commercial and cultural—between China and Britain. They look at European scientists’ struggles to understand tea’s history and medicinal properties, and they recount the ways its delicate flavor and exotic preparation have enchanted poets and artists. Exploring everything from its everyday use in social settings to the political and economic controversies it has stirred—such as the Boston Tea Party and the First Opium War—they offer a multilayered look at what was ultimately an imperial industry, a collusion—and often clash—between the world’s greatest powers over control of a simple beverage that has become an enduring pastime.

Download or read book History of the Opium Problem written by Hans Derks and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2012-04-18 with total page 851 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Covering a period of about four centuries, this book demonstrates the economic and political components of the opium problem. As a mass product, opium was introduced in India and Indonesia by the Dutch in the 17th century. China suffered the most, but was also the first to get rid of the opium problem around 1950.

Download or read book Bullets and Opium written by Liao Yiwu and published by Atria/One Signal Publishers. This book was released on 2020-03-03 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “memorable series of portraits of the working class people who defended Tiananmen Square” (The New York Review of Books) during the protests from the award-winning poet, dissident, and “one of the most original and remarkable Chinese writers of our time” (Philip Gourevitch). Much has been written about the Tiananmen Square protests, but very little exists in the words of those who were actually there. For over seven years, Liao Yiwu—a master of contemporary Chinese literature, imprisoned and persecuted as a counter-revolutionary until he fled the country in 2011—secretly interviewed survivors of the devastating 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. Tortured, imprisoned, and forced into silence and the margins of Chinese society for thirty years, their harrowing and unforgettable stories are now finally revealed in this “indispensable historical document” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review).

Download or read book The Tale of Tea written by George van Driem and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Tale of Tea presents a comprehensive history of tea from prehistoric times to the present day in a single volume, covering the fascinating social history of tea and the origins, botany and biochemistry of this singularly important cultigen.

Download or read book Opium for the Masses written by Jim Hogshire and published by Feral House. This book was released on 2010-08-01 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A practical guide to growing and using poppies and other botanical wonders.

Download or read book Tea written by Roy Moxham and published by Constable. This book was released on 2004 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The British were slow to take to tea, lagging behind the Portuguese and Dutch, and even the French. When they finally took it to their hearts, however, it became a national obsession. They covered their kingdom with tea gardens and tea shops. The taxation of tea led to massive smuggling, and the loss of their American empire.

Download or read book Opium Poppy Cultivation and Heroin Processing in Southeast Asia written by and published by . This book was released on 1993 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book A Dark History of Tea written by Seren Charrington Hollins and published by Pen and Sword History. This book was released on 2020-07-08 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A look at Britain’s storied history with the beloved beverage, including slavery, war, drug smuggling, fortune telling, and the economy’s globalisation. A Dark History of Tea looks at our long relationship with this most revered of hot beverages. Renowned food historian Seren Charrington-Hollins digs into the history of one of the world’s oldest beverages, tracing tea’s significance on the tables of the high and mighty as well as providing relief for workers who had to contend with the ardours of manual labour. This humble herbal infusion has been used in burial rituals, as a dowry payment for aristocrats; it has fuelled wars and spelled fortunes as it built empires and sipped itself into being an integral part of the cultural fabric of British life. This book delves into the less tasteful history of a drink now considered quintessentially British. It tells the story of how, carried on the backs of the cruelty of slavery and illicit opium smuggling, it flowed into the cups of British society as an enchanting beverage. Chart the exportation of spices, silks and other goods like opium in exchange for tea, and explain how the array of good fortunes—a huge demand in Britain, a marriage with sugar, naval trade and the existence of the huge trading firms—all spurred the first impulses of modern capitalism and floated countries. The story of tea takes the reader on a fascinating journey from myth, fable and folklore to murky stories of swindling, adulteration, greed, waging of wars, boosting of trade in hard drugs and slavery and the great, albeit dark engines that drove the globalisation of the world economy. All of this is spattered with interesting facts about tea etiquette, tradition and illicit liaisons making it an enjoyable rollercoaster of dark discoveries that will cast away any thoughts of tea as something that merely accompanies breaks, sit downs and biscuits. Praise for A Dark History of Tea “The author gathers many of the dangerous and morbid events throughout tea history and compiles them into one well-researched book. An entertaining read for anyone looking for interesting tea history.” —Sara Shacket, Tea Happiness

Download or read book Tea War written by Andrew B. Liu and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2020-04-14 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A history of capitalism in nineteenth‑ and twentieth‑century China and India that explores the competition between their tea industries “Tea War is not only a detailed comparative history of the transformation of tea production in the 19th and early 20th centuries, but it also intervenes in larger debates about the nature of capitalism, global modernity, and global history.”— Alexander F. Day, Occidental College Tea remains the world’s most popular commercial drink today, and at the turn of the twentieth century, it represented the largest export industry of both China and colonial India. In analyzing the global competition between Chinese and Indian tea, Andrew B. Liu challenges past economic histories premised on the technical “divergence” between the West and the Rest, arguing instead that seemingly traditional technologies and practices were central to modern capital accumulation across Asia. He shows how competitive pressures compelled Chinese merchants to adopt abstract industrial conceptions of time, while colonial planters in India pushed for labor indenture laws to support factory-style tea plantations. Characterizations of China and India as premodern backwaters, he explains, were themselves the historical result of new notions of political economy adopted by Chinese and Indian nationalists, who discovered that these abstract ideas corresponded to concrete social changes in their local surroundings. Together, these stories point toward a more flexible and globally oriented conceptualization of the history of capitalism in China and India.

Download or read book Opium Poppy Garden written by William Griffith and published by Ronin Publishing. This book was released on 2009-06-15 with total page 80 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A complete guide to cultivating and harvesting the beautiful opium poppy. The opium poppy is a potent plant that has been cultivated and used for thousands of years to alleviate suffering. The use of plant substances as alternatives to synthetic medicines is resurging due to their beneficial properties and less-toxic side effects. For example, many cancer and HIV sufferers are growing opium for personal use. Opium Poppy Garden is the only book available that describes the cultivation, harvest and pharmacology of opium in a format that combines literary and instructional writing. The heart of the book is the tale of Ch'ien, a young Chinese man who travels from Costa Rica to Columbia to grow an opium garden in the manner his Taoist grandfather taught him. The story, in conjunction with "The Cultivator's Diary" and the technical appendix, provide the reader with a working knowledge of this plant.

Download or read book For All the Tea in China written by Sarah Rose and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2010-03-18 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A dramatic historical narrative of the man who stole the secret of tea from China In 1848, the British East India Company, having lost its monopoly on the tea trade, engaged Robert Fortune, a Scottish gardener, botanist, and plant hunter, to make a clandestine trip into the interior of China—territory forbidden to foreigners—to steal the closely guarded secrets of tea horticulture and manufacturing. For All the Tea in China is the remarkable account of Fortune's journeys into China—a thrilling narrative that combines history, geography, botany, natural science, and old-fashioned adventure. Disguised in Mandarin robes, Fortune ventured deep into the country, confronting pirates, hostile climate, and his own untrustworthy men as he made his way to the epicenter of tea production, the remote Wu Yi Shan hills. One of the most daring acts of corporate espionage in history, Fortune's pursuit of China's ancient secret makes for a classic nineteenth-century adventure tale, one in which the fate of empires hinges on the feats of one extraordinary man.

Download or read book Drugs and Narcotics in History written by Roy Porter and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of essays exploring the complex history of drugs and narcotics throughout historyfrom ancient Greece to the present dayshows that such substances were sought originally as healing agents, both within and without the medical profession. However, the mood- and mind-altering characteristics of some have led to the widespread abuse and legal controls we see today.

Download or read book A Thirst for Empire written by Erika Rappaport and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2019-03-05 with total page 568 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Tea has been one of the most popular commodities in the world. Over centuries, profits from its growth and sales funded wars and fueled colonization, and its cultivation brought about massive changes--in land use, labor systems, market practices, and social hierarchies--the effects of which are with us even today. A Thirst for Empire takes a vast and in-depth historical look at how men and women--through the tea industry in Europe, Asia, North America, and Africa--transformed global tastes and habits and in the process created our modern consumer society. As Erika Rappaport shows, between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries the boundaries of the tea industry and the British Empire overlapped but were never identical, and she highlights the economic, political, and cultural forces that enabled the British Empire to dominate--but never entirely control--the worldwide production, trade, and consumption of tea. Rappaport delves into how Europeans adopted, appropriated, and altered Chinese tea culture to build a widespread demand for tea in Britain and other global markets and a plantation-based economy in South Asia and Africa. Tea was among the earliest colonial industries in which merchants, planters, promoters, and retailers used imperial resources to pay for global advertising and political lobbying. The commercial model that tea inspired still exists and is vital for understanding how politics and publicity influence the international economy ..."--Jacket.

Download or read book Opium Poppy written by L. Kapoor and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 1995-08-08 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Here is an in-depth examination of the opium poppy--the first medicinal plant known to mankind. In Opium Poppy: Botany, Chemistry, and Pharmacology, author L. D. Kapoor provides readers with a comprehensive resource on poppy production from seed to alkaloid. He explores the opium poppy?s origin, distribution, chemistry, and uses and abuses from ancient civilizations through the present day. He covers plant and seed production and crop improvement and explores in detail the chemical and pharmaceutical by-products of the opium poppy. The book begins with a historical overview of the origin and use of opium poppy in ancient civilizations such as Greece, Egypt, and Mesopotamia. Chapters that follow contain detailed information on: botanical studies cytogenics and plant breeding agronomy, including insect and pest control measures physiological and anatomical studies chemical and pharmacological aspects of opium alkaloids biosynthesis and physiology of opium alkaloids the occurrence and role of alkaloids in plants the evaluation of analgesic actions of morphine in various pain models in experimental animals Opium Poppy: Botany, Chemistry, and Pharmacology is a useful reference for professionals and students of pharmacy, botany, chemistry, medicine, and pharmacology who need a better overall understanding of this ancient plant and its (potential) modern usage.