Creating the American Junkie: Addiction Research in the Classic Era of Narcotic Control

Book Description

Heroin was only one drug among many that worried Progressive Era anti-vice reformers, but by the mid-twentieth century, heroin addiction came to symbolize irredeemable deviance. Creating the American Junkie examines how psychiatristsand psychologists produced a construction of opiate addicts as deviants with inherently flawed personalities caught in the grip of a dependency from which few would ever escape. Their portrayal of the tough urban addict helped bolster the federal government's policy of drug prohibition and created a social context that made the life of the American heroin addict, or junkie, more, not less, precarious in the wake of Progressive Era reforms.

Weaving together the accounts of addicts and researchers, Acker examines how the construction of addiction in the early twentieth century was strongly influenced by the professional concerns of psychiatrists seeking to increase their medical authority; by the disciplinary ambitions of pharmacologists to build a drug development infrastructure; and by the American Medical Association's campaign to reduce prescriptions of opiates and to absolve physicians in private practice from the necessity of treating difficult addicts as patients. In contrast, early sociological studies of heroin addicts formed a basis for criticizing the criminalization of addiction. By 1940, Acker concludes, a particular configuration of ideas about opiate addiction was firmly in place and remained essentially stable until the enormous demographic changes in drug use of the 1960s and 1970s prompted changes in the understanding of addiction--and in public policy.

Book Description

On 11 January 1879 the British Empire went to war with the independent kingdom of Zululand. The British anticipated a swift and decisive victory, placing great faith in modern firepower; no plans were made for suppressing the Zulu over a protracted period, or for providing defensive positions from which to occupy Zulu territory. However, the losses suffered at Isandlwana and Rorke’s Drift quickly altered the British approach; throughout the rest of the war, the British fortified almost every position they occupied in Zululand, from permanent column depots to temporary halts. This title explores British defensive techniques employed during the war, and how these related to contemporary engineering theory. Among the sites covered are Eshowe Mission Station, forts Pearson and Tenedos, and Rorke's Drift.

Customer Reviews:

Great story of God's faithfulness, mercy, and kindness - not w/o some wrinkles.......2007-08-06

I just read this whole book today. The book is fairly well-written and reads easily. The main theme I took away from the book is just how awesome God is in how He sovereignly arranges the affairs of our lives and leads us through very difficult times. It's apparent in this story how God, in His mercy and love, arranged the events of the lives this story recounts.

It was particularly refreshing to read a story about those suffering persecution for their faith in Nazi Germany who were not Jews, but Christians families struggling with the persistent peer-pressure of their friends and neighbors. Further, it was nice to see an honest account of American behavior towards the Germans that included the not so nice stuff that was done under the banner of he American flag. It's very easy to believe that Americans served only in a redemptive capacity during WWII and miss the fact that many atrocities were committed at the hands of American GIs too.

The story is about a seventh day adventist (SDA) family. It could just be me, but I detected a tone in the story, or an implied hint that God was faithful to the characters because of their dutiful keeping of the Sabbath rather than due to His loving nature and rich mercy. Now, before you flame me for my comments, let me just say that I do see in scripture how obedience to God in the face of difficulty pleases God (ie. Daniel,Joseph, etc.), however, this book seems relate the the law-keeping of the family involved to the miraculous way God intervened and less on God's compassion afforded to them due to being in Christ. Every miracle seemed to be credited to that right way of living. This seems to be in contrast to what the apostle Paul writes in Romans 4:4-5. There are a few instances where it seems that the writer indicates that the sabbath keepers were spared where everyone else was not as if God only spared the faithful. This is not unexpected given the traditional SDA view that only those whom follow SDA teaching are the "true church" and right with God. Again, I know many SDAs do not hold this view, however I do believe that Ellen White did hold this view and many today still do. Please don't read my comments to be anti-SDA. I believe that God loves them as much as anyone else! There's only one body of Christ and it has no denominational label or associated pet doctines. The basis of our salvation however is the sufficiency of Christ's death on our behalf, not our faithfulness to honor the 7th day sabbath.

That said, I would still buy the book again and still found it to be an encouraging, thrilling testimony to God's mighty hand! I wish there were more stories from this time in history of how God preserved other Christians.

Historical Accuracy?.......2006-04-13

At the beginning, the author states that she is taking some liberties with characters, etc., the usual things authors do in order to better tell the story. No issue there.

It can't be later than 1941 in the book when Moroccan forces invade and devastate a Black Forest village that the family has left just the day before. Now there were in fact Moroccan and Algerian forces attached to the French forces, but the invasion of Germany proper began end of 1944/beginning of 1945. It would have been that much later that Moroccans attacked anything in Germany. In WWII, the entire war changed in the meantime.

That does not take away anything from God's work and protection and the family's faith which is inspirational (albeit, sometimes more focused on the being an Adventist than a follower of Jesus Christ). However, taking liberties to the point that the personal story disconnects from history in general does more damage to the story than simplify anything.

I have not finished the book yet, and while the story itself has me curious about the rest, I wonder whether I would find more inaccuracies. I understand that such a story is hard to tell in all details, but when there are obvious things that are wrong, you are left wondering a bit.

A fine, though overly sentimental, story........2006-02-09

"A Thousand Shall Fall" is indeed an inspirational story of a WWII German soldier, Franz Hasel, and his family who maintain their faith and morality as best they can in the most difficult of times. I found the tale, written by Hasel's youngest daughter who was born during the war, to be thoroughly enjoyable, uplifting, heartbreaking and an extremely easy read. The obstacles that Franz had to deal with while serving in Russia and that his wife, Helene, and their children regularly confronted in Germany are dramatic and suspenseful, and their commitment to their beliefs through it all is a powerful testimony to what is good and admirable in humanity.

Their story is written in a direct and even simple manner, but also from a rather sentimental and I'd say romanticized point of view. The instances of the family's certain failings (they are human, after all) and stumbles with their faith, and their reactions to the events surrounding them are very rare and relatively trivial in degree. The book seems to combine the basic truth of their journey with a bit of myth and perhaps even fantasy. For example (and hopefully without giving too much away), while I have no doubt that there were instances where American soldiers committed unsavory acts during the war, I found the chapter where US soldiers place the village women and children in peril of their lives to be improbable at best, and the soldiers' reaction to the resolution of the situation to be too sentimental to be accurate.

As to the Hasel family's faith and their view of their relationship with God, I found them to be very human in their "willingness" to box God into the kind of God that was most relevant to their circumstances and their own views. Their zealous adherence to Sabbath keeping and the avoidance of pork is both admirable and yet questionably dogmatic (as it relates to scripture and the teaching of Christ). It is also revealing of the egocentric point of view we all struggle with that when Helene and the children are on the only train car that is saved from destruction (from Allied bombers) while traveling out of the city she praises God for protecting her and her children. Surely their were people in the other train cars who were also praying for God's protection and yet died in the attack, as well as non-believers and even "bad" people who were saved in the train car along with the Hasel family. This is not to say that the Hasel's were foolhardy or wrong in their beliefs, only that their view of God seemed somewhat limited in scope at times, which is of course a very normal limitation we all share.

This book might make for a fine small group study and topic of discussion.

A good read..........2005-11-13

This book was filled with intrique and suspense. Reading was a joy. However, I must say that this family seemed to be a bit more captivated by their Adventist teaching than the simple testimony of the grace of God's protection in Jesus Christ. The challenge of maintaining a Christian testimony seemed to get lost in their preoccupation with worshiping on Saturday and staying away from pork. If you can look past the sectarianism you'll enjoy this.

Wow! What a Faith Builder!.......2005-09-12

I read this fast moving book in 3 days and can't say enough good things about it.

The story is about the adventures of a Christian man drafted into the German army in WW2, as well as the struggles of his wife and children to survive back home.

Page after page, they are confronted with obsticals and assaults upon their Seventh Day Adventist beliefs, where they must either stand up for their faith and trust God, or roll over and deny all or part of it. Each act of faith is, in turn, followed by a confirming act of God's provision and protection.

This would be a good book for teens, whether Christian, non-christian, Jewish - any teen, because it shows people standing up for what they believe is right, against what's popular and accepted by the masses, even though they must endure hardship and ridicule.

Average customer rating:

An excellent guide to air war over the Balkans during 1940-1

Air War for Yugoslavia, Greece and Crete 1940-41
Christopher Shores , Brian Cull , and Nicola Malizia
Manufacturer: Squadron/Signal Publications
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: 089747208X

Customer Reviews:

An excellent guide to air war over the Balkans during 1940-1.......1999-09-04

Air War for Yugoslavia,Greece and Crete is a very accurate record of the the air operations over the Balkans from the initial attack of Italy against Greece until the fall of Crete to the German Fallschirmjaeger.It covers all the actions of the RAF and the Hellenic Air Force against the Regia Aeronautica and the later operations of the Luftwaffe and the Yugoslavian Air Force.After research of the records of all the combattants the writers were able to present a complete picture of their subject.Even though I managed to find some errors(for example,the second line figthers of the Hellenic Air Force were actually 2 Gladiators,2 Avia B-534s and some left over Avia BH33s and not the number of B-534s claimed by the writers)I think that this book is very accurate and an excellent choise to whomever wants to study this front of WWII(altough fairly expensive)

Air War for Yugoslavia Greece and Crete 1940-41

Average customer rating:

Air War for Yugoslavia Greece and Crete 1940-41
Christopher and Cull, Brian with Nicola Malizia Shores
Manufacturer: Grub Street
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000GTYS9E

Average customer rating:

AIR WAR FOR YUGOSLAVIA, GREECE AND CRETE 1940-41
Christopher and Brian Cull with Nicola Malizia Shores
Manufacturer: Grub House
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000VB753S

Amazon.com

This is an attempt to understand Mexico's steep descent into turmoil, which happened rapidly after the uprising in Chiapas on New Year's Day 1994. Following the assassinations of a presidential candidate and then the congressional leader, President Carlos Salinas de Gortari had barely left office when the peso collapsed. Pursued by allegations of corruption, Salinas then fled the country. Oppenheimer, a reporter for The Miami Herald, argues that the crisis is the result of nothing grander than a turf war within a decrepit ruling party and that the Chiapas uprising is not something new, just another eruption of the Marxist intellectualism that has long flourished in Latin America.

Customer Reviews:

Should be required reading.......2003-05-04

This book is so shocking, it left me hoping the author made it all up. It raises many important questions regarding the US relationship with out southern neighbor. A must read.

GOOD HISTORY, WELL RESEARCHED, FAST PACED READ.......2003-04-12

In Bordering on Chaos, Oppenheimer does a very good job of depicting the events and digging up the dirty that led to many of the most important events in mid-1990s Mexico, including the murder of the leading presidential candidate, the rise of the Zapatistas and the choice of Zedillo for president.

However, instead of pure history, we are presented with deep character development for the two main actors in this process, Zedillo himself (the president to be) and Subcomandante Marcos, the leader of the Zapatista movement. In this process, we learn of the political ploys adopted by the PRI, the almost monarchic party that led the country for most of the century. These include forays into education, health, and the most important social services. Another important area is the corruption going on at the top levels of the PRI, requiring, for example, that business people contribute a minimum of [several] million to participate in the government, or else be excluded, with all that it entailed. There is less than I would like to know on Carlos Salinas, the now disgraced but formerly darling leader.

Overall, a good history and a well written book. If you have an interest in Mexico, or in the crisis period of the mid-1990s, this may offer some of the pieces that build up a puzzle of it.

Facinating account.......2001-12-14

This is a great read for anyone wanting to know about Mexico during the 1990s. It's very indepth, at times it feels like maybe Oppenheimer doesn't have all the information to tell the story, but he sure tells a lot of it. It's also not overly biased, like many books about recent Mexican history. Oppenheimer does a great job of setting the scene, explaining who is who, and helping the reader get their arms around all the different factions that make for a volatile social environment in Mexico. I also read "Castro's Final Hour" which was informative, but not as good (especially since the "final hour" was somewhere in the early nineties, and now it's 2001). I'd love to read more of Oppenheimer.

Andresito has excellent contacts.......2001-02-17

Excellent book on recent Mexican history.

Excellent. Give Us More........2000-12-07

The dearth of good books on Mexico makes this one very welcome. It's architecture rests largely on two character portraits: one of Ernesto Zedillo, and the other of the man who calls himself Subcommander Marcos. There is some sketchy material, too, on Carlos Salinas, but it's the type of data that adds to the enigma of the man rather than to our understanding of him.

With Zedillo, one can see why two huge accomplishments coincided with his term in office, and went largely unlauded: 1) the payback of the bailout money ahead of time, and 2) the holding of real elections.

Oppenheimer shows Zedillo to be honest and smart--unlike many Mexican politicians, his degree from an Ivy League school was not just window dressing; he really is a trained economist. But he was not very popular. As an uncorruptible technocrat, he never would have gotten the nod to be the new president if not for the assassination of Colosio, whose campaign manager he was at the time of the murder. But once he was thrust in by Fate to the number one spot, he proved unusually effective. He was not fashionable or charismatic, and not very well loved by the electorate, which understandably blamed him for the devaluation which occurred at the very beginning of his term. Carlos Salinas was fashionable and charismatic, and there can be little doubt that the conditions necessitating the devaluation accumulated during his term.

Even now, with Zedillo gone, those two accomplishments loom over the future more powerfully than anything else that has happened in Mexico for many years.The payback of the bailout money signals that though there may be stumbles on the way to free trade with the US, a quick recovery is possible instead of a long Japanese-style tailspin. The bailout money could have gone into the pockets of well-placed Mexicans, (where now are the millions that the World Bank poured into Russia?) but it did not. I would guess that a lot of credit for that goes to the unfashionably honest Zedillo.

The conversion to a truly multiparty system where it is possible for anyone to win also bodes well for the future, both economically and culturally. Mexico could have started having real elections a long time ago, elections that were more than just costly and showy formalities, but it did not. They didn't have a real election until it was time to replace Zedillo. The irony is that a corrupt system put into power an honest man, who then reformed it.

The other character that makes this book work is Rafael Guillen, AKA Subcommander Marcos, the leader of the Zapatista uprising, who turns out to be neither an Indian nor a peasant nor even a native of Chiapas, but simply a garden variety marxist from a middle class family in Tampico. An undereducated and underworked lout, he acquired a degree from the National Autonomous University of Mexico with a dissertation on capitalist oppression (what else?). Employing in this dissertation a style reminiscent of the Unabomber, he revealed the family to be the first "unit of oppression", followed by schools, the second "unit of oppression", and so on. The only thing that can break this ubiquitous oppression, according to the budding Subcommander, is "proletarian politics".

Oppenheimer doesn't go into how this ideological huckster managed to convince the peasants of Chiapas he could help them--that would be an excellent and highly entertaining book in itself--, but he does show clearly what type of person cooked up the rebellion, which did no good for anyone. In short, it was the kind of person without enough sense to use something other than a ski mask (wool?) to disguise himself in the tropics.

By making plain the character of these two men, Oppenheimer adds much to our understanding of what has gone on in Mexico in the last few years. Still, much goes unanswered, such as the actual legality or illegality of the billionaires' banquet, where each of thirty rich men pledged $25 million to the PRI for the election of 1994. Oppenheimer tells of what a scandal there was when the publication El Economista broke the story, but doesn't say whether anyone was prosecuted or even had in fact broken the law. The implication of the secrecy of the banquet and the subsequent scandal, is that there are legal limits on campaign contributions in Mexico, as there are in the US. I'm not sure this is the case.

If in fact there are no legal limits, it becomes a question of whether Mexicans in general disapproved of their richest compatriots throwing their financial weight around. It's to Oppenheimer's credit that he notes the alternative to wealthy men giving dizzying sums to the PRI, which is the Mexican government giving dizzying sums to the PRI, which is the way it had been done since the Revolution.

Frankly, if I were a Mexican taxpayer, I'd rather the PRI got its money from the billionaires.

Average customer rating:
Bordering on Chaos: Guerrillas, Stockbrokers, Politicians, and Mexico's Road to Prosperity
Andres; Little Brown and Co Oppenheimer
Manufacturer: Little Brown & Co (T)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OUF6Z0

Average customer rating:
Bordering on Chaos: Guerrillas, Stockbrokers, Politicians, and Mexico's Road to Prosperity

Manufacturer: Little Brown
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000FYRNQK

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