This Is Your Country On Drugs

[salvorhardin]

I just finished this book and was really impressed with it. It's probably the best popular history of drug use I've yet read. Here's what I had to say about it on Goodreads:

An extraordinarily informative, and entertaining, account of drug use and interdiction which neither glorifies or vilifies its subject matter. This Is Your Country On Drugs focuses on the latter half of the 20th through the first decade of the 21st centuries, and is told in a straight forward journalistic manner without repeating the hoary old myths and conspiracy theories so often associated with books on this topic. I especially appreciated the chapter which sought to cut through the conspiracy theories and lies associated with Gary Webb's Dark Alliance series for the San Jose Mercury News (it turns out he got much right). No matter what your opinions are regarding drug use, there is much to learn in these pages.

http://www.amazon.com/This-Your-Country-Drugs-History/dp/0470643897

[bemildred]

1. Another, global historical perspective:

Forces of Habit: Drugs and the Making of the Modern World

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1358247.Forces_of_Habit

[salvorhardin]

2. Thanks

Looks interesting.

[bemildred]

3. I learned a lot from it.

I think I'll give yours a try too. The drug war and it's antecedents here have peculiarities all their own, just like our strange disfunctional political arrangements.