La Fee Verte ("The Green Fairy") has intoxicated artists, poets, and writers ever since the nineteenth century. Stories abound of absinthe's druglike sensations of mood lift and inspiration due to the presence of wormwood, its infamous special ingredient, ultimately leading to delirium, homicidal mania, and death.

Opening with the 1905 Absinthe Murders, Phil Baker offers a cultural history of absinthe, from its modest origins as an herbal tonic through its luxuriantly morbid heydey in the 1890s. With a fascinating lurid cast of historical characters, and including an appendix that tests the various real and fake absinthe products currently available overseas, The Book of Absinthe is a fascinating and erudite companion to the world's most notorious drink.