Cocaine (Paperback or Softback)

Cocaine is the story of a young man who runs off to Paris to seek fame, fortune, and fun. Pitigrilli’s classic novel charts the comedy and pathos of a young man's tragic trajectory. Tito Arnaudi is a dandified hero with several mistresses he juggles. A failed medical student, Tito is hired as a journalist in Paris, where he investigates cocaine dens and invents lurid scandals and gruesome deaths that he sells to newspapers as his own life becomes more outrageous than his phony press reports.

Telling of orgies and strawberries soaked in champagne and ether, Tito lives with intensity as he pursues his Italian girlfriend Maud (née Maddalena) and wealthy Armenian Kalantan, who insists on making love in a black coffin. Provocatively illustrated, filled with lush, intoxicating prose, Cocaine is a wicked novel about the Lost Generation in 1920s Paris. Dizzy and decadent, Pitigrilli leaves nothing unexplored as he presents astonishing descriptions of upper class debauching — strawberries and chloroform, naked dancing, cocaine aplenty, and guests openly injecting morphine. Despite its wit, Cocaine is a sobering account of the dangers of drugs and sexual obsession. Tito happily trades in his twilight years for moments of wicked ecstasy.

Pitigrilli is the pseudonym for Dino Segre (1893–1975), an Italian writer who made his living as a journalist and novelist. Published in 1921, Cocaine is Pitigrilli's most lauded work and placed on the "forbidden books" list by the Catholic Church. He founded the literary magazine Grandi Firme, which was published in Turin from 1924 to 1938, when it was banned by anti-Semitic Race Laws of the Fascist government. Although baptized as a Catholic, Segre was classified as Jewish and worked in the 1930s as an informant for OVRA, the Fascist secret service. Pitigrilli's efforts, beginning in 1938, to change his racial status failed and he was interned as a Jew in 1940 and was released later that year.

Michael R. Aldrich, Ph.D., is the author of the first doctoral dissertation on cannabis in the United States, Marijuana Myths and Folklore (1970); editor of the first pot 'zine, The Marijuana Review, 1968-1973; co-founder of Amorphia, The Cannabis Cooperative (1969–1973); organizer of California Marijuana Initiative (1972); curator of Fitz Hugh Ludlow Memorial Library (1974–2002) and the Aldrich Archives (1974–present); program coordinator, Institute for Community Health Outreach (California statewide AIDS outreach worker training program); executive director of CHAMP medical marijuana community center, San Francisco (2001–2002); and co-founder of the San Francisco Patient and Resource Center (SPARC), (2010–present). He and his wife Michelle have worked in the marijuana movement for more than 40 years together.

Mark James Estren holds two PhDs from Columbia, one in English and one in psychology. A nationally known journalist for more than 35 years and Pulitzer Prize winner for the book, A History of Underground Comics (Ronin), he was also named one of the “People to Watch” by Fortune magazine. Estren is a current contributor to The Washington Post, Bottom Line newsletter group, and Journal of Animal Ethics, as well as an executive producer (CBS and ABC News; also PBS) and major contributor to In a Word (Dell).