America's war on drugs. It makes headlines, tops political agendas and provokes powerful emotions. But is it really worth it? That's the question posed by Steven Duke and Albert Gross in this groundbreaking book. They argue that America's biggest victories in the war on drugs are the erosion of our constitutional rights, the waste of billions of dollars and an overwhelmed court system. After careful research and thought, they make a strong case for the legalization of drugs. It's a radical...

This "perceptive and concise" history chronicles humanity's relationship with the AIDS virus ( Publishers Weekly, starred review).From the Castro bathhouses to AZT and the denial of AIDS in South Africa, this sweeping look at AIDS covers the epidemic from all angles and across the world. Engel seamlessly weaves together science, politics, and culture, writing with an even hand—noting the excesses of the more radical edges of the ACT UP movement as well as t...

A bestselling author of Acid Dreams tells the great American pot story— a panoramic, character-driven saga that examines the medical, recreational, scientific, and economic dimensions of the world’s most controversial plant.Martin A. Lee traces the dramatic social history of marijuana from its origins to its emergence in the 1960s as a defining force in a culture war that has never ceased. Lee describes how the illicit marijuana subculture overcame government oppo...

Everything we know about drugs-from acid to epidemics to DARE and salvia-turns out to be wrongStock up on munchies and line up your water bottles: journalist Ryan Grim will take you on a cross-country tour of illicit drug use in the U.S.-from the agony (the huge DEA bust of an acid lab in an abandoned missile silo in Kansas) to the ecstasy (hallucinogens at raves and music festivals). Along the way, Grim discovers some surprising truths. Did anti-drug campaigns act...

While there have always been norms and customs around the use of drugs, explicit public policies--regulations, taxes, and prohibitions--designed to control drug abuse are a more recent phenomenon. Those policies sometimes have terrible side-effects: most prominently the development of criminal enterprises dealing in forbidden (or untaxed) drugs and the use of the profits of drug-dealing to finance insurgency and terrorism. Neither a drug-free world nor a world of free drugs seems to be on ...

More and more women—mothers, grandmothers, wives, daughters, and sisters—are doing hard prison time all across the United States. Many of them are facing the prospect of years, decades, even lifetimes behind bars.Oddly, there's been little public discussion about the dramatic increase of women in the prison system. What exactly is happening here, and why? The answers are in Women Behind Bars, in which investigative journalist Silja Talvi sheds light on why American girls a...

"An unforgettable look at the peculiar horrors and humiliations involved in solitary confinement" from the prisoners who have survived it ( New York Review of Books ).On any given day, the United States holds more than eighty-thousand people in solitary confinement, a punishment that—beyond fifteen days—has been denounced as a form of cruel and degrading treatment by the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture.Now, in a b...

THE EMMY AWARD-WINNING HOST OF COURT TV’S "CATHERINE CRIER LIVE" DESCRIBES AN AMERICAN LEGAL SYSTEM DANGEROUSLY OUT OF CONTROL – AND FINDS THE LAWYERS GUILTY AS CHARGED.As a child, Catherine Crier was enchanted by film portrayals of crusading lawyers like Clarence Darrow and Atticus Finch. As a district attorney, private lawyer, and judge herself, she saw firsthand how the U.S. justice system worked – and didn’t. One of the most respected legal journalists and commentators today, s...

Story lines from The Wire challenge public perceptions about the deadly, real-world connections between drugs, crime, and poverty.Did Omar Little die of lead poisoning? Would a decriminalization strategy like the one in Hamsterdam end the War on Drugs? What will it take to save neglected kids like Wallace and Dukie? Tapping into 'The Wire' uses the acclaimed television series as a road map for exploring connections between inner-city poverty and d...

Pain touches sensitive nerves in American liberalism, conservatism, and political life.People in chronic pain have always sought relief—and have always been judged—but who decides whether someone is truly in pain? In this history of American political culture, Keith Wailoo examines how pain and compassionate relief define a line between society's liberal trends and conservative tendencies. Tracing the development of pain theories in politics, medicine, law, and soc...

It is high time to think sanely about marijuana.Reefer Sanity offers a solution to the long-had debate about marijuana—one that steers clear of policy extremes, challenges assumptions, and shifts the emphasis to education, intervention, and common sense.A former Senior Advisor in President Obama's drug policy offer, Kevin Sabet conscientiously examines the socio-economic consequences and the intractable "myths" concerning marijuana that essentially p...

Why Escape from Hell? In Angel Grace's and Dr. Gary Brennan's book you will see the horrors the addicted go through. Walk down by the river and see how meth caused toothless addicts to be forced to live in cardboard boxes. Do they look like they are having fun?What if the thousands of studies proving that a dollar spent on rehabilitation saves ten dollars in costs are still not convincing enough? What if the drug rehab programs spotted across America that save money on jails and st...