Poppies Politics And Power

Author : James Tharin Bradford
Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 1501738348
Total Pages : 296 pages
Book Rating : 4.40/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Poppies, Politics, and Power written by James Tharin Bradford and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2019-06-15 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Historians have long neglected Afghanistan's broader history when portraying the opium industry. But in Poppies, Politics, and Power, James Tharin Bradford rebalances the discourse, showing that it is not the past forty years of lawlessness that makes the opium industry what it is, but the sheer breadth of the twentieth-century Afghanistan experience. Rather than byproducts of a failed contemporary system, argues Bradford, drugs, especially opium, were critical components in the formation and failure of the Afghan state. In this history of drugs and drug control in Afghanistan, Bradford shows us how the country moved from licit supply of the global opium trade to one of the major suppliers of hashish and opium through changes in drug control policy shaped largely by the outside force of the United States. Poppies, Politics, and Power breaks the conventional modes of national histories that fail to fully encapsulate the global nature of the drug trade. By providing a global history of opium within the borders of Afghanistan, Bradford demonstrates that the country's drug trade and the government's position on that trade were shaped by the global illegal market and international efforts to suppress it. By weaving together this global history of the drug trade and drug policy with the formation of the Afghan state and issues within Afghan political culture, Bradford completely recasts the current Afghan, and global, drug trade.

Author : Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780674051348
Total Pages : 276 pages
Book Rating : 4.43/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Opium written by Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2010-03 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bitter, brownish and sticky, opium - the sap of the opium poppy, Papaver somniferum - has been cultivated from the earliest of times.

Author : Alai
Publisher : HMH
ISBN 13 : 0547347146
Total Pages : 441 pages
Book Rating : 4.41/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Red Poppies written by Alai and published by HMH. This book was released on 2003-05-06 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This suspenseful saga of Tibet during the rise of Chinese Communism “conjures up a faraway world . . . panoramic and intimate at the same time” (Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times). A lively and cinematic twentieth-century epic, Red Poppies focuses on the extravagant and brutal reign of a clan of Tibetan warlords during the rise of Chinese Communism. The story is wryly narrated by the chieftain’s son, a self-professed “idiot” who reveals the bloody feuds, seductions, secrets, and scheming behind his family’s struggles for power. When the chieftain agrees to grow opium poppies with seeds supplied by the Chinese Nationalists in exchange for modern weapons, he draws Tibet into the opium trade—and unwittingly plants the seeds for a downfall. A “swashbuckling novel,” Red Poppies is at once a political parable and a moving elegy to the lost kingdom of Tibet in all its cruelty, beauty, and romance (The New York Times Book Review).

Author : Kenaz Filan
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1594779384
Total Pages : 320 pages
Book Rating : 4.81/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Power of the Poppy written by Kenaz Filan and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-02-23 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive look at the inspiring, healing, and addictive powers of the Opium Poppy and its derivatives throughout history • Covers the history, risks, and benefits of opium, morphine, oxycodone, methadone, and fentanyl • Provides techniques of cultivation, extraction, and safe consumption as well as methods for overcoming addiction and staying “clean” • Profiles 11 famous users, including Thomas de Quincey, William S. Burroughs, Lou Reed, and DJ Screw Few plant allies have a history as long and well-documented as Papaver somniferum, the celebrated and infamous opium poppy. For thousands of years people around the world have been unable to resist the poppy’s siren song of intoxicating pleasure, pain relief, and visionary states--so much so that this potent plant has literally adapted itself to human civilization: in increasing its intoxicating properties, it came to rely solely on humankind for its propagation. From 6,000-year-old poppy seeds found in archaeological digs in Europe to the black tar heroin factories of South America and the modern “War on Drugs,” Kenaz Filan explores the history of this enduring plant and its many derivatives--including opium, morphine, oxycodone, methadone, and fentanyl--as well as its symbiotic relationship with humans as medicine, food, intoxicant, and visionary tool. Profiling 11 famous users including Thomas de Quincey, William S. Burroughs, Lou Reed, and DJ Screw, Filan examines how opium and other poppy derivatives inspired them as well as the high price it exacted for its inspiration. Covering techniques of cultivation, extraction, and safe consumption along with methods for overcoming addiction and staying “clean,” this book offers a sensible approach to the poppy that recognizes the plant not as a crop to be harvested or eradicated but as a living, sentient ally that can offer healing or harm and must be approached with respect and caution.

Author : James Tharin Bradford
Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 1501738356
Total Pages : 192 pages
Book Rating : 4.57/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Poppies, Politics, and Power written by James Tharin Bradford and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2019-06-15 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Historians have long neglected Afghanistan's broader history when portraying the opium industry. But in Poppies, Politics, and Power, James Tharin Bradford rebalances the discourse, showing that it is not the past forty years of lawlessness that makes the opium industry what it is, but the sheer breadth of the twentieth-century Afghanistan experience. Rather than byproducts of a failed contemporary system, argues Bradford, drugs, especially opium, were critical components in the formation and failure of the Afghan state. In this history of drugs and drug control in Afghanistan, Bradford shows us how the country moved from licit supply of the global opium trade to one of the major suppliers of hashish and opium through changes in drug control policy shaped largely by the outside force of the United States. Poppies, Politics, and Power breaks the conventional modes of national histories that fail to fully encapsulate the global nature of the drug trade. By providing a global history of opium within the borders of Afghanistan, Bradford demonstrates that the country's drug trade and the government's position on that trade were shaped by the global illegal market and international efforts to suppress it. By weaving together this global history of the drug trade and drug policy with the formation of the Afghan state and issues within Afghan political culture, Bradford completely recasts the current Afghan, and global, drug trade.

Author : Brigitte Findakly
Publisher : Drawn & Quarterly
ISBN 13 : 1770463712
Total Pages : 114 pages
Book Rating : 4.14/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Poppies of Iraq written by Brigitte Findakly and published by Drawn & Quarterly. This book was released on 2021-04-22 with total page 114 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A personal account of an Iraqi childhood Poppies of Iraq is Brigitte Findakly’s nuanced tender chronicle of her relationship with her homeland Iraq, co-written and drawn by her husband, the acclaimed cartoonist Lewis Trondheim. In spare and elegant detail, they share memories of her middle class childhood touching on cultural practices, the education system, Saddam Hussein’s state control, and her family’s history as Orthodox Christians in the arab world. Poppies of Iraq is intimate and wide-ranging; the story of how one can become separated from one’s homeland and still feel intimately connected yet ultimately estranged. Signs of an oppressive regime permeate a seemingly normal life: magazines arrive edited by customs; the color red is banned after the execution of General Kassim; Baathist militiamen are publicly hanged and school kids are bussed past them to bear witness. As conditions in Mosul worsen over her childhood, Brigitte’s father is always hopeful that life in Iraq will return to being secular and prosperous. The family eventually feels compelled to move to Paris, however, where Brigitte finds herself not quite belonging to either culture. Trondheim brings to life Findakly’s memories to create a poignant family portrait that covers loss, tragedy, love, and the loneliness of exile. Poppies of Iraq has been translated from the French by Helge Dascher. Dascher has been translating graphic novels from French and German to English for over twenty years. A contributor to Drawn & Quarterly since the early days, her translations include acclaimed titles such as the Aya series by Marguerite Abouet and Clément Oubrerie, Hostage by Guy Delisle, and Beautiful Darkness by Fabien Vehlmann and Kerascoët. With a background in art history and history, she also translates books and exhibitions for museums in North America and Europe. She lives in Montreal.

Author : Zohreh Ghahremani
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780984571604
Total Pages : 305 pages
Book Rating : 4.04/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Sky of Red Poppies written by Zohreh Ghahremani and published by . This book was released on 2010-07 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sky of Red Poppies begins with a casual friendship between two schoolgirls coming of age in a politically divided 1960's Iran under rule of the Shah. Roya, the daughter of a prominent family, is envious of the fierce independence of her religious classmate Shireen. But Shireen has secrets of her own. Together, Roya and Shireen contend with becoming the women they want to be, and in doing so, make decisions that will cause their tragic undoing. In the unraveling of family secrets, Roya begins to question how she was raised and how to become the person she wishes to be. Set against the backdrop of a nation forced to mute its profound identity, Sky of Red Poppies is a novel about culture, politics and the redeeming power of friendships.

Author : Nicholas J. Saunders
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1780741855
Total Pages : 288 pages
Book Rating : 4.57/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Poppy written by Nicholas J. Saunders and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-10-01 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the aftermath of the horrific trench warfare of the First World War, the poppy – sprouting across the killing fields of France and Belgium, then immortalised in John McCrae’s moving poem – became a worldwide icon. Yet the poppy has a longer history, as the tell-tale sign of human cultivation of the land, of the ravages of war and of the desire to escape the earthly realm through inspired Romantic opium dreams or the grim reality of morphine drips. This is a story spanning three thousand years, from the ancient Egyptian fights over prized medicinal potions to the addicted veterans returning home from the American Civil War, from the British political machinations during the Opium Wars with China to the struggle to end Afghanistan’s tribal narcotics trade. Through it all, there stands the transformative poppy. Nicholas J. Saunders brings us the definitive history of this ever-enduring but humble flower of the fields, a story that is at turns tragic, eye-opening and, most essentially, life-affirming – a gift to us all.

Author : Amitav Ghosh
Publisher : Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN 13 : 1429930810
Total Pages : 565 pages
Book Rating : 4.19/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Sea of Poppies written by Amitav Ghosh and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2009-09-29 with total page 565 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first in an epic trilogy, Amitav Ghosh's Sea of Poppies is "a remarkably rich saga . . . which has plenty of action and adventure à la Dumas, but moments also of Tolstoyan penetration--and a drop or two of Dickensian sentiment" (The Observer [London]). At the heart of this vibrant saga is a vast ship, the Ibis. Her destiny is a tumultuous voyage across the Indian Ocean shortly before the outbreak of the Opium Wars in China. In a time of colonial upheaval, fate has thrown together a diverse cast of Indians and Westerners on board, from a bankrupt raja to a widowed tribeswoman, from a mulatto American freedman to a free-spirited French orphan. As their old family ties are washed away, they, like their historical counterparts, come to view themselves as jahaj-bhais, or ship-brothers. The vast sweep of this historical adventure spans the lush poppy fields of the Ganges, the rolling high seas, and the exotic backstreets of Canton. With a panorama of characters whose diaspora encapsulates the vexed colonial history of the East itself, Sea of Poppies is "a storm-tossed adventure worthy of Sir Walter Scott" (Vogue).

Author : Michael Pollan
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 0593296915
Total Pages : 289 pages
Book Rating : 4.12/5 ( download)

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Download or read book This Is Your Mind on Plants written by Michael Pollan and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-07-06 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The instant New York Times bestseller | A Washington Post Notable Book | One of NPR's Best Books of the Year “Expert storytelling . . . [Pollan] masterfully elevates a series of big questions about drugs, plants and humans that are likely to leave readers thinking in new ways.” —New York Times Book Review From #1 New York Times bestselling author Michael Pollan, a radical challenge to how we think about drugs, and an exploration into the powerful human attraction to psychoactive plants—and the equally powerful taboos. Of all the things humans rely on plants for—sustenance, beauty, medicine, fragrance, flavor, fiber—surely the most curious is our use of them to change consciousness: to stimulate or calm, fiddle with or completely alter, the qualities of our mental experience. Take coffee and tea: People around the world rely on caffeine to sharpen their minds. But we do not usually think of caffeine as a drug, or our daily use as an addiction, because it is legal and socially acceptable. So, then, what is a “drug”? And why, for example, is making tea from the leaves of a tea plant acceptable, but making tea from a seed head of an opium poppy a federal crime? In This Is Your Mind on Plants, Michael Pollan dives deep into three plant drugs—opium, caffeine, and mescaline—and throws the fundamental strangeness, and arbitrariness, 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. Why do we go to such great lengths to seek these shifts in consciousness, and then why do we fence that universal desire with laws and customs and fraught feelings? In this unique blend of history, science, and memoir, as well as participatory journalism, Pollan examines and experiences these plants from several very different angles and contexts, and shines a fresh light on a subject that is all too often treated reductively—as a drug, whether licit or illicit. But that is one of the least interesting things you can say about these plants, Pollan shows, 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. Based in part on an essay published almost twenty-five years ago, this groundbreaking and singular consideration of psychoactive plants, and our attraction to them through time, holds up a mirror to our fundamental human needs and aspirations, the operations of our minds, and our entanglement with the natural world.