The first so-called democratically elected governor of Puerto Rico, Nelson A. Denis tells us in this necessary book, smoked opium and was doubly controlled by the drug. The pipe dulled his spirit and the U.S. government blackmailed him with evidence of his addiction. Denis could make more of this valence: the oppressed wallowing in the transitory pleasures of oppression, compliant under the boot of the colonizer, complicit in helping to crush those of his fellows who attempt to resist. Yet Denis’s book is a work of history—essential history, to be sure—and he refrains from speculation about possible paths forward, even though this is the question demanded by each page of this chronicle of horror: How can Puerto Rico be free?