Author(s): Richard Davenport-Hines

History

The Pursuit of Oblivion is a history of drug-taking, telling the story across five centuries of addicts and users: monarchs, prime ministers, great writers and composers, wounded soldiers, overworked physicians, oppressed housewives, exhausted labourers, high powered-businessmen, playboys, sex workers, pop stars, seedy losers, stressed adolescents, defiant schoolchildren and happy young people on a spree. It is also the history of one bad idea: prohibition.