"From the #1 New York Times bestselling author Michael Pollan, a radical challenge to how we think about drugs, and an exploration into the powerful human attraction to psychoactive plants -- and the equally powerful taboos. Of all the things humans rely on plants for--sustenance, beauty, fragrance, flavor, fiber--surely the most curious is our use of them is to change consciousness: to stimulate or calm, fiddle with or completely alter, the qualities...

"When a car crash sidelines Mickey just before softball season, she has to find a way to hold on to her spot as the catcher for a team expected to make a historic tournament run. Behind the plate is the only place she's ever felt comfortable, and the painkillers she's been prescribed can help her get there. The pills do more than take away pain; they make her feel good. With a new circle of friends--fellow injured athletes, others with just time...

"The final novel in the bestselling Ibis Trilogy. It is 1839 and China has embargoed the trade of opium, yet too much is at stake in the lucrative business and the British Foreign Secretary has ordered the colonial government in India to assemble an expeditionary force for an attack to reinstate the trade. Among those consigned is Kesri Singh, a soldier in the army of the East India Company. He makes his way eastward on the Hind, a transport ship...

"Usamos las plantas a diario para alterar nuestra conciencia. Nos relajamos con lavanda o valeriana y nos activamos con cafeína, sin jamás pensar en ello como una adicción. Entonces ¿por que otras sustancias de origen vegetal, como la psilocibina o la mescalina, son ilegales? ¿Según que el criterio se ensalzan los beneficios del café y en cambio es delito plantar amapolas en algunos países? Michael Pollan investiga tres drogas de origen...

First book in the Ibis trilogy. "At the heart of this vibrant saga is a vast ship, the Ibis. Her destiny is a tumultuous voyage across the Indian Ocean shortly before the outbreak if the Opium Wars in China. In a time of colonial upheaval, fate has thrown together a diverse cast of Indians and Westerners onboard, from a bankrupt raja to a widowed tribeswoman, from a mulatto American freedman to a freespirited French orphan. As their old family ties...

A master martial artist is sent by British intelligence to the island fortress of a criminal warlord, whose martial arts academy also serves as a front for opium-smuggling and prostitution rings.

"A spectacular story, the making of a dynasty, one of the great untold sagas of a gilded Jewish Bagdadi family-the merchant princes of the orient, that built a vast empire through finance and trade: opium, cotton, oil, shipping, banking, that reached across three continents, and ultimately changed the destinies of nations. For more than two centuries, from the 18th to the 20th, they were one of the richest families in the world, known as 'the Rothschilds...