Items related to The Pursuit of Oblivion : A History of Narcotics, 1500-2000
Synopsis
The first ever comprehensive single-volume history of narcotics and illicit stimulants.
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About the Author
Richard Davenport-Hines is a past winner of the Wolfson Prize for History and contributes regularly to the TLS, Sunday Times, Independent and Nature.
From Publishers Weekly
Davenport-Hines offers a sharply opinionated history of drugs structured around three major premises: Human beings use drugs; for many that choice will be debilitating, sometimes fatal; and government prohibition of drugs, as opposed to regulation, is counterproductive and doomed to vainglorious failure. Davenport-Hines, a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and author of a well-received work on W.H. Auden, builds his case with a body of evidence encyclopedic in scope and varied in perspective. He explores the effects of drugs on families and private lives, for example, by sampling diaries of ordinary citizens, the writings of literary figures as diverse as Balzac and Ken Kesey, the theories of notorious cult-leader Timothy Leary, and the reports of a host of journalists. He is equally focused on exposing the high public costs that, he argues, have resulted from governments' treatment of drugs (both in American and elsewhere) as a criminal rather than medical problem a choice that, the author says, is a product of political demagoguery rather than honest conviction. To give credence to his charges, he quotes the inflammatory words of presidents, drug czars, and moralist such as William Bennett. U.S. policymakers exported this punitive approach to Europe and Latin America, which he deems a form of cultural imperialism. Davenport-Hines also finds hypocrisy in government support for pharmaceutical companies, whose advertising and marketing contribute to the cultural acceptance of drugs. He takes care to provide readers with useful information about the effects of both legal and illegal drugs, and to carefully discriminate among the relative dangers of different classes of drugs. The effort adds credibility to his strong writing, and his well-documented positions will be difficult to dismiss.
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- PublisherPhoenix
- Publication date2004
- ISBN 10 0753813718
- ISBN 13 9780753813713
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages432
- Rating
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The Pursuit of Oblivion: A Social History of Drugs
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The Pursuit of Oblivion: A Social History of Drugs Davenport-Hines, Richard
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