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Mike Jay

Mike Jay

Mike Jay’s books include Emperors of Dreams: Drugs in the Nineteenth Century, This Way Madness Lies: The Asylum and Beyond, and Mescaline: A Global History of the First Psychedelic. His new book, Psychonauts: Drugs and the Making of the Modern Mind, will be published in April. (December 2022)

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The Melancholy of Anatomy

The Melancholy of Anatomy

Frederick Ruysch’s exquisitely preserved human and animal body parts were marvels of both art and science in an era when the divide between the two was less clearly drawn than it is now.

Frederik Ruysch and His Thesaurus Anatomicus: A Morbid Guide

edited by Joanna Ebenstein

December 8, 2022 issue

In the Drug Archives

In the Drug Archives

“Our current fascination with psychedelics and mental exploration has a longer history than we recognize.”

September 3, 2021

The Well-Blown Mind

The Well-Blown Mind

In two new books, Carl Hart and Michael Pollan look beyond the narrow rhetoric of the war on drugs.

Drug Use for Grown-Ups: Chasing Liberty in the Land of Fear

by Dr. Carl L. Hart

This Is Your Mind on Plants

by Michael Pollan

September 23, 2021 issue

The Hide That Binds

The Hide That Binds

A medical librarian's history of books covered in human skin.

Dark Archives: A Librarian’s Investigation into the Science and History of Books Bound in Human Skin

by Megan Rosenbloom

November 5, 2020 issue

Letter

Paul Needham

A Proper Burial

December 3, 2020 issue

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