In this eye-opening book, David Courtwright offers an original interpretation of a puzzling chapter in American social and medical history: the dramatic change in the pattern of opiate addiction. Once observed primarily among upper- and middle-class matrons, addiction came to be concentrated among young, lower-class urban males, often with a delinquent or criminal record. He challenges the view that the shift resulted simply from new laws such as the Harrison Narcotic Act of 1914, and shows that a crucial role was played by the medical rather than the legal profession. Courtwright's blending of medical and scientific literature with newspaper accounts, oral histories, and personal documents results in a striking exegesis of attitudes and practices still very much with us.

David T. Courtwright is John A. Delaney Presidential Professor at the University of North Florida.

Read More by David T. Courtwright:

• Violent Land: Single Men and Social Disorder from the Frontier to the Inner City
• Forces of Habit: Drugs and the Making of the Modern World
• Dark Paradise: A History of Opiate Addiction in America