Dope Menace: The Sensational World Of Drug Paperbacks

pWhile we now enjoy this exploitative genre for its campy kitsch, gloriously bad writing, and outlandish misinformation, drug paperback books were once a transgressive medium with a perversely seductive quality./ppiDope Menace /icollects together hundreds of fabulously lurid and collectible covers in color, from xenophobic turn-of-the century tomes about the opium trade to the beatnik glories of reefer smoking and William S. Burroughs' iJunkie /ito the spaced-out psychedelic '60s. We mustn't forget the gonzo paranoia brought on by Hunter S. Thompson in the '70s, when anything was everything./ppAuthor bStephen J. Gertz /bis a well-regarded authority on antiquarian books and contributor to Feral House's iSin-A-Rama/i, an award-winning visual history of sleaze paperbacks from the sixties./ppbAnnie Nocenti/b, longtime editor of iHigh Times /imagazine, offers an informative foreword./p