Dominic Streatfeild is a documentary film producer and writer. He lives in London, England
"[Streatfeild] is an excellent storyteller....This book is a great read." --The Seattle Times "[Streatfeild's] smartly woven narrative winningly expands the narcotic's résumé beyond overdose horror stories." --GQ "A thrilling ride through exotic territory...Streatfeild's animated writing style...makes for an exciting read." --Time Out New York "A breezy history...often arresting, sometimes sobering." --The Washington Post "That [Streatfeild] succeeds in delivering this large order is amazing enough, but that he does so with such style and good humor is miraculous." --BookPage "A fascinating and richly detailed story...Streatfeild delivers a straight tale about a world where nothing is as it seems." --Publishers Weekly
Originally published in Great Britain in 2001, this book by documentary film producer Streatfeild offers a fast but uneven ride through the history of cocaine. Streatfeild combines interviews with drug dealers, users, scientists, law officers, and others involved in the commerce and culture of cocaine with readings of various popular and scientific accounts. He tracks the adaptations and spread of cocaine from its earliest religious and medicinal uses among people in the Andes to its modern incarnations as both part of the "hip" culture and as a supposed cause of criminality in the form of "crack cocaine." Streatfeild also shows how much cocaine figured in American policy in Panama, Mexico, and the Iran-Contra episode and how it affects the Colombian civil war today. But he disrupts his work with a highly personalized narrative that constantly interrupts his argument and undercuts his credibility with errors in fact, overstatements, and uncritical readings of limited sources. The result is a riff rather than a rumination on an important subject. Absent any other work of similar scope, Cocaine is worth acquiring but with a warning label that it's not all it's cracked up to be. Randall M. Miller, Saint Joseph's Univ., Philadelphia Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.
"[Streatfeild] is an excellent storyteller....This book is a great read." --The Seattle Times "[Streatfeild's] smartly woven narrative winningly expands the narcotic's resume beyond overdose horror stories." --GQ "A thrilling ride through exotic territory...Streatfeild's animated writing style...makes for an exciting read." --Time Out New York "A breezy history...often arresting, sometimes sobering." --The Washington Post "That [Streatfeild] succeeds in delivering this large order is amazing enough, but that he does so with such style and good humor is miraculous." --BookPage "A fascinating and richly detailed story...Streatfeild delivers a straight tale about a world where nothing is as it seems." --Publishers Weekly
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