Jordan Goodman is an Honorary Research Fellow at the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL. His publications include The Rattlesnake: A Voyage of Discovery to the Coral Sea (2005). Paul E. Lovejoy is Distinguished Research Professor and holds the Canada Research Chair in African Diaspora History at York University. His publications include Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa (2nd edition, 2000). Andrew Sherratt was Professor of Archaeology at the University of Sheffield. His most recent book was Economy and society in prehistoric Europe: changing perspectives (1997).

• Introduction: Peculiar Substances 1. Alcohol and its Alternatives: Symbol and Substance in Pre-Industrial Cultures 2. Coca, Beer, Cigars and Yag'e: Meals and Anti-Meals in an Amerindinian Community 3. Nicotian Dreams: The Prehistory and Early History of Tobacco in Eastern North America 4. Betelnut ‘Bisnis’ and Cosmology: A View from Papua New Guinea 5. Kola Nuts: The 'Coffee' of the Central Sudan 6. Excitantia: Or, How Enlightenment Europe took to Soft Drugs 7. From Coffeehouse to Parlour: The Consumption of Coffee, Tea and Sugar in Northwestern Europe in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries 8. Tobacco Use and Tobacco Taxation: A Battle of Interests in Early Modern Europe 9. Globalising Ganja: The British Empire and International Cannabis Traffic c. 1834 to c. 1939 10. Japan and the World Narcotics Traffic 11. The Rise and Fall and Rise of Cocaine in the United States 12. Building castles of Spit – The Role of Khat in Work, Ritual and Leisure 13. Afterword

'This is a fascinating book because it highlights the way history contributes to the shaping of moral attitudes.' – History Teaching Review