Pleasure map

Cultural histories of recreational drug use have been attempted before. But
Sadie Plant’s Writing on Drugs is particularly perceptive, especially as she
considers the longeurs of her subject: “Writing on drugs,” she writes, “has
evolved and mutated like a contagion, each writer reading the others’ work,
repeating their adventures, and also their mistakes.” Plant maps the drug
culture’s Gordian knot of pleasure and danger, tradition and innovation,
radicalism and stoned apathy, with rare if sometimes prolix-precision. Published
by Faber and Faber, £9.99, ISBN 0571196160.