Dope Menace The Sensational World Of Drug Paperbacks 19001975

About this book

"Dope Menace boasts hundreds of full color images from the wicked subgenre of drug-exploitation narratives... The covers that made these authors books so easy to pick up are collected here for the first time, in all their seductive and transgressive glory."-- Tucson Weekly. While 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. Dope Menace collects 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. Burroughsrsquo; Junkie to the spaced-out psychedelic 60s. We must not forget the gonzo paranoia brought on by Hunter S. Thompson in the 70s, when anything was everything. Author Stephen J. Gertz is a well-regarded authority on antiquarian books and contributor to Feral House's Sin-A-Rama , an award-winning visual history of sleaze paperbacks from the sixties. Annie Nocenti , longtime editor of High Times magazine, offers an informative foreword.