Hideous Absinthe A History of the Devil in a Bottle

by Adams, Jad

• ISBN13: 9781845116842
• ISBN10: 1845116844
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-05-15
• Publisher: Tauris Parke Paperbacks

Summary

Mysteriously sophisticated, darkly alluring, almost Satanic: absinthe was the drink of choice for Baudelaire, Verlaine and Wilde. It inspired paintings by Degas and Manet, van Gogh and Picasso. It was blamed for conditions ranging from sterility to madness, to French defeats in World War I. The campaign against "the devil in a bottle" resulted in its ban throughout most of Europe. Its reputation for toxicity eventually extinguished the fin-de-siecle's infatuation with absinthe, but not before it had influenced generations of artists on both sides of the channel. This book is a biography of "the green fairy": from its place in the lives of writers and artists who were inspired--and ruined--by it, to its more recent rediscovery by Ernest Hemingway and today's would-be sophisticates.

Author Biography

Jad Adams is a television producer whose last book Madder Music, Stronger Wine: The Life of Ernest Dowson, Poet and Decadent (I.B.Tauris), received resounding critical praise in Britain and the US. He has also written biographies of Tony Benn and of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Map of the Sasanian Empire

Introduction

Image and Identity: Early Sasanian Art and Iconography

Early Sasanian Coinage

The layout of Ardashir Khurreh and the Manifestation of Ardashir Papakan's State Ideology

How Pious was Shahpur I? On the Role of Religion under the Early Sasanians

The 'King of Kings' who is from the 'Race of Gods': On the Role of Religion under the Early Sasanians

The Sasanians in the East: A Bactrian Archive from Northern Afghanistan

Religion in the Sasanian Empire: Eran, Aneran, and other Designations

The Roman Wars of the Sasanian King of Kings Shahpur II

State and Society in Late Antique Iran

Prices and Drachms in the Late Sasanian Period

Late Sasanian Society between Orality and Literacy

Bibliography

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