Excellent story

really enjoyed this book...if you are interested in the history of opiates i would also recommend Dreamland by Sam Quinones. both excellent histories though from quite different viewpoints.

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Useful if a little purposeless

Goes off track quite a bit and I can’t helping thinking that the author lacks any real empathy with addicts.

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Insightful

Along with Martin Booths earlier book "Opium", "Milk of Paradise" is a must read for the lifelong learner polymath and ardent researcher of mankinds history of opiate use and supply and the legacy of what I call "Weapons of social Dystopia" natural or synthetic. Like all prejudices across humanity all there will ever be is tolerance not segregation. Tom O'Rourke 1953.......? dependant

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Listen to the Silk Roads by Frankopan instead!

I've got about halfway through, and I'm finding it just about interesting enough to keep on listening. However, the author jumps about in time confusingly, writing about the 1720s one moment, and then jumping back several decades earlier the next. I'm finding it hard to keep track of where I am both geographically and historically.

The narrator doesn't help. She hasn't taken the trouble to find out how to pronounce any words that aren't standard English. Arden isn't how anybody should pronounce Aden (though this is corrected later in the narration). Mallorca is pronounced malorca, and often plain old polysyllabic English words get garbled. She pronounces the Chinese Qing dynasty as King dynasty, which is momentarily confusing. I'm happy to make allowances for automated voices, but constant mispronunciations like this show disrespect to the author, the content, and the listener.

I read the Economist every week, and something I appreciate enormously is that the writers never assume that their readers automatically know who or what they're talking about. For example, instead of just introducing the Pearl River without explaining where that is, or what it is, as Lucy Inglis does, if this were the Economist, she would add a brief explanation. Not to do so puts readers at a disadvantage, and may make them feel ignorant.

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3 people found this helpful

Whistlestop tour of a missing piece of recorded history

Fascinating, entertaining and engaging history of the world! If that seems excessive, the author cleverly navigates from earliest trade routes and exploration, through empires and colonies up to modern times. With key military events and medical developments (often related), and cause and effect of government encouragement and prohibition and the business interests, legal and ‘criminal’ that have been created.

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Terrible narration. Amateurishly written.

I like books like these, very much, so I was excited to see this book so highly rated.
How disappointing, it was so bad I didn’t finish it.
The narrator has no presence and can’t hold the story. Speaks too fast as though nervous and appears to disregard grammar relating to pauses like periods(.). This leaves one a little lost as to wether a whole new sentence or idea has started or if we’re still on the previous one.
The story has potential, but the author jumps around to different aspects so much and so quickly thereby giving the feeling that she is rushing her point and wants to move on to the next point ASAP. Less is more, but not in this case - it’s almost erratic.

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1 person found this helpful