Dope Menace: The Sensational World of Drug Paperbacks

By Stephen J. Gertz

"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. Burroughs' Junkie to 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.

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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B001W9E2TI
• ISBN13: 9781932595345
• Release Date: December 2008
• Publisher: Feral House
• Length: 250 Pages
• Weight: 1.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.5" x 9.8"