“... a Swiss chemist took a dose of a drug he was developing to help with breathing. When Albert Hofmann cycled home afterwards, he saw kaleidoscopic swirls. Later, he felt very anxious. That was LSD. The study of brain chemistry was off to a colourful start. Around the same time, a French military surgeon was working with a drug company to develop an ...”

“... he wrote for non-specialist audiences. What he wrote for his books on Miró, Matisse and Hans Hofmann were introductions to the illustrations in those volumes, not scholarly monographs. His output as a reviewer was a far more significant aspect of his career. He wrote mostly for the Nation in the 1940s, stepping away only for occasional contributions to ...”

“... drugs had been “dope”, of interest only to bohemians, foreigners and criminals’ – the Michael Pollan of his time.*In the aftermath of The Doors of Perception, the cactus experience appeared in the emerging literature of the Beats and the pages of the New Yorker. Peyote buttons were circulating in Greenwich Village and among anthropology students ...”