Bop Apocalypse details the rise of early drug culture in America by weaving together the disparate elements that formed this new and revolutionary segment of the American social fabric. Martin Torgoff connects the birth of jazz in New Orleans, the first drug laws, Louis Armstrong, Mezz Mezzrow, Harry Anslinger and the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, swing, Lester Young, Billie Holiday, the Savoy Ballroom, Reefer Madness, Charlie Parker, the birth of bebop, the rise of the Beat Generation, and the coming of heroin to Harlem. Bop Apocalypse is also a living history that teaches us much about the conflicts and questions surrounding drugs today, casting many contemporary issues in a new light by connecting them back to the events of this transformative era. At a time when marijuana legalization is rapidly becoming a reality, it takes us back to the advent of marijuana prohibition, when the templates of modern drug law, policy, and culture were first established, along with the concomitant racial stereotypes. As a new opioid epidemic sweeps through white working- and middle-class communities, it brings us back to when heroin first arrived on the streets of Harlem in the 1940s. And as we debate and grapple with the gross racial disparities of mass incarceration, it puts into sharp and provocative focus the racism at the very roots of our drug war.

Red-dirt marijuana -- Stompin' at the Savoy -- The paranoid spokesman -- Two hits of that stuff, and Jack, you'd be mellow -- The white mayor of Harlem -- Pops -- The misdo gets meanor and meanor (jailhousely speaking) -- The great tenor solo in the shoeshine jukebox -- You mean there's something like this in this world? -- Once known, never forgotten -- The shot heard 'round the world -- You're buzzing, baby -- And the hippos were boiled in their tanks -- Parker's mood -- A ghost in daylight on a crowded street -- Ain't nobody's business if I do -- The sacralization of the mundane -- That was our badge -- Blues for a junkie whore -- Wild form, man, wild form -- Trust the Germans to concoct some really evil shit -- Holy the Bop Apocalypse! -- 'Round midnight -- Why are all these young boys being hanged in limestone caves, Bill? -- The empirical soul of jazz -- Peyote solidities of halls -- A readily recognizable stigmata -- Goodbye pork pie hat -- It's all a part of their poetic, no, their metaphysical, education -- Let lady live -- The end of the beginning : an epilogue.