New Books in Drugs, Addiction and Recovery
Episodes
Leslie M. Harris, "Slavery and the University: Histories and Legacies" (U Georgia Press, 2019)
28 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Slavery and the University: Histories and Legacies (University of Georgia Press, 2019), edited by Leslie M. Harris, James T. Campbell, and Alfred L. B...
Lina Britto, "Marijuana Boom: The Rise and Fall of Colombia's First Drug Paradise" (U California Press, 2020)
15 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In her recently published book Marijuana Boom: The Rise and Fall of Colombia's First Drug Paradise (University of California Press 2020), Lina Britto ...
Conor Picken and Matthew Dischinger, "Southern Comforts: Drinking and the US South" (LSU Press, 2020)
10 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In this this interview, Carrie Tippen talks with Conor Picken and Matthew Dischinger about their edited collection, Southern Comforts: Drinking and th...
Travis Lupick, "Fighting for Space: How a Group of Drug Users Transformed One City’s Struggle with Addiction" (Arsenal, 2108)
08 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
North America is in the grips of a drug epidemic; with the introduction of fentanyl, the chances of a fatal overdose are greater than ever, prompting ...
Matt Cook, "Sleight of Mind: 75 Ingenious Paradoxes in Mathematics, Physics, and Philosophy" (MIT Press, 2020)
30 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Paradox is a sophisticated kind of magic trick. A magician's purpose is to create the appearance of impossibility, to pull a rabbit from an empty hat....
Phillipa Chong, “Inside the Critics’ Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times” (Princeton UP, 2020)
25 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
How does the world of book reviews work? In Inside the Critics’ Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times (Princeton University Press, 2020), Philli...
K. Linder et al., "Going Alt-Ac: A Guide to Alternative Academic Careers" (Stylus Publishing, 2020)
30 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
If you’re a grad student facing the ugly reality of finding a tenure-track job, you could easily be forgiven for thinking about a career change. How...
Nancy D. Campbell, "OD: Naloxone and the Politics of Overdose" (MIT Press, 2020)
24 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
For years, drug overdose was unmentionable in polite society. OD was understood to be something that took place in dark alleys―an ugly death awaitin...
Joe Miller, "US of AA: How the Twelve Steps Hijacked the Science of Alcoholism" (Chicago Review Press, 2019)
07 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In the aftermath of Prohibition, America’s top scientists joined forces with members of a new group, called Alcoholics Anonymous, and put their clou...
Benjamin Breen, "The Age of Intoxication: Origins of the Global Drug Trade" (U Penn Press, 2019)
26 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In Benjamin Breen's The Age of Intoxication: Origins of the Global Drug Trade (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019), we are transported back to a t...
Maziyar Ghiabi, "Drug Politics: Managing Disorder in the Islamic Republic of Iran" (Cambridge UP, 2019)
09 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Iran has one of the planet's highest rates of addiction. Maziyar Ghiabi's Drug Politics: Managing Disorder in the Islamic Republic of Iran (Cambridg...
Alberto Cairo, "How Charts Lie: Getting Smarter about Visual Information" (Norton, 2019)
03 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
We’ve all heard that a picture is worth a thousand words, but what if we don’t understand what we’re looking at? Social media has made charts, i...
Kathryn Conrad on University Press Publishing
03 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
As you may know, university presses publish a lot of good books. In fact, they publish thousands of them every year. They are different from most trad...
J. Neuhaus, "Geeky Pedagogy: A Guide for Intellectuals, Introverts, and Nerds Who Want to Be Effective Teachers" (West Virginia UP, 2019)
24 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The things that make people academics -- as deep fascination with some arcane subject, often bordering on obsession, and a comfort with the solitude t...
David Farber, "Crack: Rock Cocaine, Street Capitalism, and the Decade of Greed" (Cambridge UP, 2019)
16 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
A shattering account of the crack cocaine years from award-winning American historian David Farber, Crack: Rock Cocaine, Street Capitalism, and the De...
Thomas Hager, "Ten Drugs: How Plants, Powders, and Pills Have Shaped the History of Medicine" (Abrams Press, 2019)
14 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Behind every landmark drug is a story. It could be a researcher’s genius insight, a catalyzing moment in geopolitical history, a new breakthrough te...
Lucas Richert, “Strange Trips: Science, Culture, and the Regulation of Drugs” (McGill-Queens UP, 2018)
11 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Strange Trips isn’t only the title of Dr. Lucas Richert’s new book; it’s also a good description of the journey substances take from the black m...
Evan Bennett, "When Tobacco Was King: Families, Farm Labor, and Federal Policy in the Piedmont" (UP Florida, 2014)
04 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Professor Evan Bennett of Florida Atlantic University, author of When Tobacco Was King: Families, Farm Labor, and Federal Policy in the Piedmont (Univ...
Travis Rieder, "In Pain: A Bioethicist’s Personal Struggle with Opioids" (Harper Collins, 2019)
11 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
On a spring day in 2015, Dr. Travis Rieder’s life changed. A motorcycle accident, a shattered foot, and a long series of surgeries later, the John H...
Emily Dufton, "Grass Roots: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Marijuana in America" (Basic Books, 2017)
30 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Marijuana. Weed. Cannabis. Pot. Whatever term you use, this intoxicant and medical product leads to long discussions. Emily Dufton visits the podcast ...
James Tharin Bradford, "Poppies, Power, and Politics: Afghanistan and the Global History of Drugs and Diplomacy" (Cornell UP, 2019)
13 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Afghanistan and the United States have a complicated relationship. And poppies have often been at the center of the problem between the two countries....
Celeste Watkins-Hayes, "Remaking a Life: How Women Living with HIV/AIDS Confront Inequality" (U California Press, 2019)
26 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
How do women -- especially poor and low-income women with histories of childhood sexual trauma and drug addiction -- respond to and deal with an HIV/A...
Tricia Starks, "Smoking Under the Tsars: A History of Tobacco in Imperial Russia" (Cornell UP, 2018)
22 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
How and when did Russia become a country of smokers? Why did makhorka and papirosy become ubiquitous products of tobacco consumption? Tricia Starks ex...
Anthony Ryan Hatch, "Silent Cells: The Secret Drugging of Captive America" (U Minnesota Press, 2019)
12 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Over the past forty years, U.S. prisons and jails have used various psychotropic drugs. In this interview, Anthony Ryan Hatch discusses the need to th...
Jeanette M. Fregulia, "A Rich and Tantalizing Brew: A History of How Coffee Connected the World" (U Arkansas Press, 2019))
26 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In this this interview, Carrie Tippen talks with Jeanette M. Fregulia about the movements of coffee beans, coffee drinking, and coffee houses from Eth...
Vivian Percy, "Saving Jenny: Rescuing Our Youth from America's Opioid and Suicide Epidemic" (Radius Books, 2018)
01 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Normal turned to PTSD and a substance abuse nightmare for Jenny the instant a taxi struck her, catapulting her twenty feet across a busy New York City...
Jules Evans, "The Art of Losing Control: A Philosopher's Search for Ecstatic Experience" (Canongate Books, 2017)
28 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
People have always sought ecstatic experiences - moments where they go beyond their ordinary self and feel connected to something greater than them. S...
Discussion of Massive Online Peer Review and Open Access Publishing
19 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In the information age, knowledge is power. Hence, facilitating the access to knowledge to wider publics empowers citizens and makes societies more de...
Dave Chase, "The Opioid Crisis Wake Up Call: Health Care is Stealing the American Dream. Here is How We Take It Back" (Health Rosetta Media, 2018)
22 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The opioid crisis in America is considered by many to be the worst national public health crisis in the last 100 years. In his new book, The Opioid Cr...
Alexander S. Dawson, "The Peyote Effect: From the Inquisition to the War on Drugs" (U California Press, 2018)
17 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Peyote occupies a curious place in the United States and Mexico: though prohibited by law, its use remains permissible in both countries for ceremonia...
McKenzie Wark, "General Intellects: Twenty-One Thinkers for the Twenty-First Century" (Verso, 2017)
06 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
McKenzie Wark’s new book offers 21 focused studies of thinkers working in a wide range of fields who are worth your attention. The chapters of Gener...
Ann Taves, “Revelatory Events: Three Case Studies of the Emergence of New Spiritual Paths” (Princeton UP, 2016)
10 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
I’ve often asked myself this question: “How do religions begin?” I don’t know about you, but I think I would be very, very skeptical if someon...
Stephanie Elizondo Griest, “All the Agents and Saints: Dispatches from the U.S. Borderlands” (UNC Press, 2017)
06 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In the United States, contemporary discourse concerning “the border” almost always centers around the country’s southern boundary shared with Me...
Beth Macy, “Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company That Addicted America” (Little, Brown & Company, 2018)
21 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
“Appalachia was among the first places where the malaise of opioid pills hit the nation in the mid-1990s, ensnaring coal miners, loggers, furniture ...
Jacob Levine, “Cannabis Discourse: Facts and Opinions in Context” (Jacob Levine, 2018)
13 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
What is the landscape of our cannabis knowledge? In his new book Jacob Levine author of the Cannabis Discourse: Facts and Opinions in Context (Jacob ...
Edward Khantzian, “Treating Addiction: Beyond the Pain” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2018)
23 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Treatment of addiction often focuses on abstinence or ‘harm reduction.’ While many people benefit greatly from such approaches, the underlying pai...
Matthew R. Pembleton, “Containing Addiction: The Federal Bureau of Narcotics and the Origins of America’s Global Drug Wars” (University of Massachusetts Press, 2017
25 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
It’s common to place the start of the War on Drugs with the Nixon or Reagan Administrations, but as Matthew Pembleton tells us, those are only phase...
Andrew Lees, “Mentored by a Madman: The William Burroughs Experiment” (Notting Hill Editions, 2017)
12 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Mentored by a Madman: The William Burroughs Experiment (Notting Hill Editions, 2017) is a fascinating account by one of the world’s leading and most...
Mark Fleischman, “Inside Studio 54” (Rare Bird Books, 2017)
08 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Studio 54 opened its doors 40 years ago and since that time it has held a place in American popular culture. Studio 54 was the place to go dancing to ...
Claire D. Clark, “The Recovery Revolution” (Columbia UP, 2017)
28 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Before the 1960s, doctors were generally in control of the treatment of drug addicts. And that made a certain sense, because drug addicts had somethin...
Michael Muhammad Knight, “Tripping with Allah: Islam, Drugs, and Writing” (Soft Skull Press, 2013)
13 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Michael Muhammed Knight writes this book from a first-person perspective, as a piece of creative non-fiction. The book includes a liberal amount of s...
Eugene Raikhel, “Governing Habits: Treating Alcoholism in the Post-Soviet Clinic” (Cornell UP, 2016)
11 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Alcoholism is a strange thing. That it exists, no one seriously doubts. But it’s not entirely clear (diagnostically speaking) what it is, who has it...
Travis Linnemann, “Meth Wars: Police, Media, Power” (NYU Press, 2016)
15 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
If all you knew about methamphetamines came from popular culture (“Breaking Bad”) or government anti-drug campaigns (“Faces of Meth”), then yo...
Norman Ohler, “Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017)
08 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Norman Ohler’s Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017) explores the drug culture of Nazi Germany. Far from being a natio...
Ericka Johnson, ed. “Gendering Drugs: Feminist Studies of Pharmaceuticals” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017)
24 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
On the frontier of feminist technoscience research, Ericka Johnson’s collaborative project Gendering Drugs: Feminist Studies of Pharmaceuticals (Pal...
Matthew James Crawford, “The Andean Wonder Drug: Cinchona Bark and Imperial Science in the Spanish Atlantic, 1630-1800” (U. Pittsburgh Press, 2016)
23 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Matthew James Crawford’s new book is a fascinating history of an object that was central to the history of science, technology, and medicine in the ...
George T. Diaz, “Border Contraband: A History of Smuggling Across the Rio Grande” (U. of Texas Press, 2015)
08 Nov 2016
Contributed by Lukas
In Border Contraband: A History of Smuggling Across the Rio Grande (University of Texas Press, 2015) Professor George T. Diaz examines a subject that ...
Sam Quinones, “Dreamland: The True Tale of American’s Opiate Epidemic” (Bloomsbury Press, 2015)
08 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
In the early 2000s, the press–at least in Boston, where I was living at the time–was full of shrill stories about drug-crazed addicts breaking int...
Suzanna Reiss, “We Sell Drugs: The Alchemy of U.S. Empire” (University of California Press, 2014)
14 Sep 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Though the conventional history of the U.S.-led “War on Drugs” locates the origins of this conflict in a reaction to the domestic culture of exces...
Kristin Peterson, “Speculative Markets: Drug Circuits and Derivative Life in Nigeria” (Duke UP, 2015)
10 Sep 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Kristin Peterson‘s new ethnography looks carefully at the Nigerian pharmaceutical market, paying special attention to the ways that the drug trade l...
Stefan Ecks, “Eating Drugs: Psychopharmaceutical Pluralism in India” (NYU Press, 2013)
19 Aug 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Drugs exist that are meant to help people feel better. The doctors who prescribe them might believe that they work, while their patients do not. In ex...
Paul A. Christensen, “Japan, Alcoholism, and Masculinity: Suffering Sobriety in Tokyo” (Lexington Books, 2014)
19 Aug 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Paul A. Christensen‘s new book is a thoughtful ethnography of drinking, drunkenness, and male sociability in modern urban Japan. Focusing on two maj...
Todd Meyers, “The Clinic and Elsewhere: Addiction, Adolescents, and the Afterlife of Therapy” (U of Washington Press, 2013)
22 May 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Todd Meyers‘ The Clinic and Elsewhere: Addiction, Adolescents, and the Afterlife of Therapy (University of Washington Press, 2013) is many things, a...
Rick Strassman, “DMT and the Soul of Prophecy” (Park Street Press, 2014)
15 Mar 2015
Contributed by Lukas
DMT and the Soul of Prophecy:A New Science of Spiritual Revelation in the Hebrew Bible (Park Street Press, 2014) asks a number of provocative question...
Joseph M. Gabriel, “Medical Monopoly: Intellectual Property Rights and the Origins of the Modern Pharmaceutical Industry” (U Chicago Press, 2013)
19 Feb 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Commercial interests are often understood as impinging upon the ethical norms of medicine. In his new book, Medical Monopoly: Intellectual Property Ri...
Keith Wailoo, “Pain: A Political History” (Johns Hopkins UP, 2014)
20 Jan 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Is pain real? Is pain relief a right? Who decides? In Pain: A Political History (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014),Keith Wailoo investigates how p...
Lisa L. Gezon, “Drug Effects: Khat in Biocultural and Socioeconomic Perspective” (Left Coast Press, 2012)
28 Nov 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Khat, the fresh leaves of the plant Catha edulis, is a mild psycho-stimulant. It has been consumed in Yemen, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, Somalia for ...
Jeremy A. Greene, “Generic: The Unbranding of Modern Medicine” (Johns Hopkins UP, 2014)
26 Nov 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Is there any such thing as a generic drug? Jeremy A, Greene‘s new book Generic: The Unbranding of Modern Medicine (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2...
James Martin, “Drugs on the Dark Net: How Cryptomarkets are Transforming the Global Trade in Illicit Drugs” (Palgrave, 2014)
09 Oct 2014
Contributed by Lukas
I am old enough to realise that we have entered a science fiction world in which the old systems of the market place are being sidestepped by new tech...
Sharon K. Farber, “Hunger for Ecstasy: Trauma, the Brain, and the Influence of the Sixties” (Aronson, 2013)
20 May 2014
Contributed by Lukas
It may seem silly to ask why we seek ecstasy. We seek it, of course, because it’s ECSTASY. We are evolved to want it. It’s our brain’s way of sa...
Miriam Kingsberg, “Moral Nation: Modern Japan and Narcotics in Global History” (University of California Press, 2013)
08 Apr 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Miriam Kingsberg‘s fascinating new book offers both a political and social history of modern Japan and a global history of narcotics in the modern w...
Peter Maguire and Mike Ritter, “Thai Stick” (Columbia Press, 2013)
29 Mar 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Reading Peter Maguire and Mike Ritter‘s book Thai Stick: Surfers, Scammers and the Untold Story of the Marijuana Trade (Columbia Press, 2013) is th...
Carlo C. DiClemente, “Substance Abuse Treatment and the Stages of Change: Selecting and Planning Interventions” (Guilford Press, 2013)
20 Feb 2014
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, I talk with Carlo C. DiClemente, a Presidential Research Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Maryland- Bal...
Karen G. Weiss, “Party School: Crime, Campus, and Community” (Northeastern UP, 2013)
08 Feb 2014
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, I sit down with Karen G. Weiss, associate professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at West Virginia University, to t...
Eugene Raikhel and William Garriott, eds., “Addiction Trajectories” (Duke UP, 2013)
26 Nov 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Addiction has recently emerged as an object of anthropological inquiry. In a wonderful, focused volume of ethnographies of addiction in a wide range o...
Ioan Grillo, “El Narco: Inside Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency” (Bloomsbury, 2012)
19 Aug 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Today I spoke to Ioan Grillo about his book El Narco: Inside Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency (Bloomsbury, 2012). This book is an excellent introduction...
Kathleen J. Frydl, “The War on Drugs in America, 1940-1973” (Cambridge UP, 2013)
09 May 2013
Contributed by Lukas
In 1971, President Richard Nixon declared a “War on Drugs.” We are still fighting that war today. According to many people, we’ve lost but don’...
Paul Kan, “Cartels at War: Mexico’s Drug-Fueled Violence and the Threat to US National Security” (Potomac Books, 2012)
07 Mar 2013
Contributed by Lukas
The violence in Mexico is receiving a lot of media attention internationally. Paul Rexton Kan has produced a book that provides us with a comprehensiv...
Chris Cooper, “Run, Swim, Throw, Cheat: The Science Behind Drugs in Sport” (Oxford University Press, 2012)
09 Oct 2012
Contributed by Lukas
This past August, the saga of Lance Armstrong came to its inglorious end. The seven-time champion of the Tour de France and Olympic medalist ended his...
Isaac Campos, “Home Grown: Marijuana and the Origins of Mexico’s War on Drugs” (UNC Press, 2012)
31 Jul 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Isaac Campos is the author of Home Grown: Marijuana and the Origins of Mexico’s War on Drugs (University of North Carolina Press, 2012). Campos is a...
David Linen, “The Compass of Pleasure: How Our Brains Make Fatty Foods, Orgasm, Exercise, Marijuana, Generosity, Vodka, Learning, and Gambling Feel So Good” (Viking, 2011)
26 Jun 2012
Contributed by Lukas
What happens in our brains when we do things that feel good, such as drinking a glass of wine, exercising, or gambling? How and why do we become addic...
Erica Prussing, “White Man’s Water: The Politics of Sobriety in a Native American Community” (University of Arizona Press, 2011)
15 Nov 2011
Contributed by Lukas
For the past half century, Alcoholics Anonymous and its 12-step recovery program has been the dominant method for treating alcohol abuse in the United...
Eric C. Schneider, “Smack: Heroin and the American City” (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008)
15 Jun 2011
Contributed by Lukas
When I arrived at college in the early 1980s, drugs were cool, music was cool, and drug-music was especially cool. The coolest of the cool drug-music ...
Teresa Gowan, “Hobos, Hustlers and Backsliders-Homeless in San Francisco” (University of Minnesota Press, 2010)
25 Mar 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Why do people become homeless? Is it because some people have made bad decisions in their lives or can’t hold onto a stable job? Or is homelessness ...
Nick Reding, “Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town” (Bloomsbury, 2009)
14 Aug 2009
Contributed by Lukas
In 1980 I left Kansas to go to college in Iowa. A lot of things caught my attention about Iowa, for example, that the people really are very nice. I a...