Howard Hughes was America's most famous playboy & rogue operator, an outlaw eccentric millionaire & hellraiser, 'I can buy any man' he once bragged, 'and have any woman.' & it was almost true.
He stormed from bedroom to boardroom, from corporate bribary to Capitol Hill; his affairs with Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Bette Davis & many others were as brief as they were stormy. he was a deeply involved in Watergate & in the Cuban missile crisis. He burgled his own office records when tax authorities were after him. &, despite a mystrious illness, he wheeled & dealed to the last days of his life.
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Since the Stone Age, drugs have been sniffed to induce sleep, mixed to cure ills, swallowed to stimulate creativity, snorted to increase sexuality, popped for the hell of it & smoked to see God. Natural or synthesized, they have been smuggled for all kinds of reasons from saving the world to becoming stinking rich. Blamed for deaths, wars, suicides, collapses of governments, multiple crashes, individual crises, anarchy & chaos, they have also been praised for opening minds & expanding consciousness. Worshipped & demonised, venerated & chastised, force-fed & forbidden. Every society has had its intoxicant, be it sacrament or scourge. They have also become irreversibly interwoven with politics, sex, business, religion, & rock & roll, providing writers, whether emerging from the ancient classical world or the street laboratory of today, with both inspiration & challenge. ...

Since the Stone Age, drugs have been sniffed to induce sleep, mixed to cure ills, swallowed to stimulate creativity, snorted to increase sexuality, popped for the hell of it & smoked to see God. Natural or synthesized, they have been smuggled for all kinds of reasons from saving the world to becoming stinking rich. Blamed for deaths, wars, suicides, collapses of governments, multiple crashes, individual crises, anarchy & chaos, they have also been praised for opening minds & expanding consciousness. Worshipped & demonised, venerated & chastised, force-fed & forbidden. Every society has had its intoxicant, be it sacrament or scourge. They have also become irreversibly interwoven with politics, sex, business, religion, & rock & roll, providing writers, whether emerging from the ancient classical world or the street laboratory of today, with both inspiration & challenge. ...

Hugo! is the remarkable biography of Hugo Chavez, President of Venezuela & leader of the Bolivian Revolution. Ex-paratrooper ...

Hugo! is the remarkable biography of Hugo Chavez, President of Venezuela & leader of the Bolivian Revolution. Ex-paratrooper ...

Human Cargo is a remarkable oral testament. Caroline Moorehead has visited war zones, camps & prisons from Guinea & Afghanistan ...