Opium is a highly addictive drug. It’s made from juice extracted from the unripe seed pods of opium poppy plants (the scientific name is Papaver somniferum). Opium is used to make a class of drugs ...

In the final pages of Smoke and Ashes: Opium’s Hidden Histories, Amitav Ghosh volunteers a startling confession. Though he had spent many years working on the book and had “accumulated an enormous ...