Novelist/biographer Martin Booth's sprawling history of opium tracks the drug from its initial use as a powerful and effective, if often misused, medicine and anesthetic through the development and massive societal impact of its primary derivatives—morphine and heroin—up to its current status as a massive international social ill. Along the way, Booth illustrates the rampant corruption and hypocrisy that has allowed opium and heroin addiction to spread throughout the global community, noting that the U.S. and Great Britain have outwardly condemned the drug trade while secretly utilizing it to further their political and economic interests. But while Booth's book is informative, it's also tremendously flawed: Unnecessarily complicated and inexplicably lacking footnotes, it's about as fun to read as a DEA report. One of the book's major problems lies in its massive scope. Since it's impossible to provide a comprehensive history of opium in one 350-page book, Booth primarily focuses on the logistics of heroin and opium smuggling, which, while intermittently interesting, makes for a less-than-riveting read. Unfortunately for casual readers, Opium: A History isn't chronological, instead divided into chapters covering different aspects of the drug trade, thereby necessitating skipping about frequently in time. And for a non-fiction book by an acclaimed novelist, Opium is disappointingly lacking in vivid characterizations: After a while, it becomes all but impossible to tell one evil Asian drug lord apart from another. The book does a nice job providing a comprehensive overview of the opium trade over the past 200 years, but for anyone not writing a term paper, Opium: A History is far from essential.