Matt O'Hara's THE FLYING DEATH In-Store Event And Book Signing

Join us at Mrs. Dalloway's Bookstore on Thursday, November 12 at 7:00 PM when Matt O'Hara comes to the store to present his new book The Flying Death: Poison, Plunder, and the Quest for a Miracle Medicine in the Amazon. Matt will be joined by Rebecca Herman for the conversation and will sign copies of his book after the presentation.

Click here to preorder a copy of The Flying Death.

In the fall of 1938, a young, frail American explorer set off down a river in the western Amazon in search of curare, a poison he thought might save his life. Richard Gill had learned that local tribes used curare-laced blow darts to kill animals, but it was also potentially a cure for many ailments, including his own. He also thought he could make a fortune by connecting the knowledge of two worlds. Obsessed with curare, he raced to make deals with Indigenous poison masters in the Amazon and pharmaceutical companies back home, even as his Russian-born rival Boris Krukoff sought to do the same.

In The Flying Death, the historian Matt O'Hara asks who and what we are willing to sacrifice in the name of discovery and profit. O'Hara brings to life Gill's epic quest, a stranger-than-fiction true story that moves from unexplored territory in the Amazon to rogue medical trials and cutthroat corporate boardrooms in the United States. Navigating treacherous terrain and politics, Gill and Krukoff successfully created a veritable curare–industrial complex, as the plant became a key element in shock therapy, transformed surgery in the United States and across the globe, and eventually led to a Nobel Prize. The Flying Death offers a thrilling ride across Indigenous knowledge, scientific exploration, and exploitation, unearthing a story of discovery that poses searching questions about the price of progress, who pays it, and who gets credit.

MATT O'HARAis a professor of history at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is the award-winning author of many journal articles and two books, The History of the Future in Colonial Mexicoand A Flock Divided: Race, Religion, and Politics in Mexico, 1749–1857.

REBECCA HERMAN is Associate Professor of History at UC Berkeley, where she teaches about environmental politics, US-Latin American relations, and modern Latin America. She is the author of Cooperating with the Colossus: A Social and Political History of US Military Bases in World War II Latin America and is currently at work on a book about anti-extractivism in Antarctica. Her first novel, The Outposters, will be published next summer by Cardinal.

THIS EVENT is free but registration is requested. Registration ends at 6:00 pm on November 12.

BECAUSE SEATING is limited, please register only if you plan to attend.

DUE TO SPACE limitations, we may not be able to accommodate every person at an event, so early registration is encouraged.

WALK-INS will be accommodated only if space allows.

WE ASK that attendees arrive between 6:45 and 7:00 PM for the event.

PLEASE leave your non-support companion animals at home.

OUR shared restrooms are not accessible after 6:30 PM, please plan accordingly.