Daily Telegraph, December 29, 2001
magnificent... formidably researched, beautifully written, and abundant with telling detail and pitch-black humour
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Fortean Times, February, 2002
literate and cheerfully squalid... a model of popular cultural history... brilliant
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Evening Standard, February 12, 2002
engaging, curious, and gruesomely hilarious
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
New Scientist, January 19, 2002
informative and hair-raising
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
The Independent, February 22, 2002
hugely entertaining... excellent... merits prolonged and repeated consumption
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Book Description
Beginning with the 1905 Absinthe Murders, this book offers a cultural history of absinthe, from its modest origins as a herbal tonic through its luxuriantly morbid heyday in the late nineteenth century. Along with a number of fascinating but little known characters, who often died young, the absinthe scrapbook contains Verlaine, Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Oscar Wilde, Ernest Dowson, Aleister Crowley, Arthur Machen, Strindberg, Alfred Jarry, Van Gogh, Toulouse- Lautrec, Alphonse Allais, Ernest Hemingway and Picasso.
After discussing the rituals and modus operandi of absinthe drinking, this book reveals the recently discovered pharmacology of how real absinthe actually works on the nervous system. Last but not least, an appendix tests the various real and fake absinthe products that are now available. From 1890s decadence to the American Gothic subculture, this is the most up-to-date and wide-ranging study of a substance that is as mythical as opium.
