New Books in Drugs, Addiction and Recovery Marshall Poe

Adam Zientek, Assistant Professor of History at UC Davis joins Jana Byars to talk about his new book, A Thirst for Wine and War: The Intoxication of French Soldiers on the Western Front (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2024). Beginning in the fall of 1914, every French soldier on the Western Front received a daily ration of wine from the army. At first it was a modest quarter litre, but by 1917 it had increased to the equivalent of a full bottle each day. The wine ration was intended to sustain morale in the trenches, making the men more willing to endure suffering and boredom. The army also supplied soldiers with doses of distilled alcohol just before attacks to increase their ferocity and fearlessness. This strategic distribution of alcohol was a defining feature of French soldiers’ experiences of the war and amounted to an experimental policy of intoxicating soldiers for military ends.
A Thirst for Wine and War explores the French army’s emotional and behavioral conditioning of soldiers through the distribution of a mind-altering drug that was later hailed as one of the army’s “fathers of victory.” The daily wine ration arose from an unexpected set of factors including the demoralization of trench warfare, the wine industry’s fear of losing its main consumers, and medical consensus about the benefits of wine drinking. The army’s related practice of distributing distilled alcohol to embolden soldiers was a double-edged sword, as the men might become unruly. The army implemented regulations and surveillance networks to curb men’s drinking behind the lines, in an attempt to ensure they only drank when it was useful to the war effort. When morale collapsed in spring 1917, the army lost control of this precarious system as drunken soldiers mutinied in the thousands. Discipline was restored only when the army regained command of soldiers’ alcohol consumption.
Drawing on a range of archives, personal narratives, and trench journals, A Thirst for Wine and War shows how the French army’s intoxication of its soldiers constituted a unique exercise of biopower deployed on a mass scale.
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Ryan Reft is a historian in the Manuscript Division at the Library of Congress, where he oversees collections pertaining to 20th and 21st century domestic politics and policies. He received his PhD in U.S. urban history from the University of California San Diego in 2014, and his writing has appeared all over the place, from edited volumes to academic journals, to the Washington Post and Zocalo Public Square. He’s also currently the senior co-editor of the Urban History Association’s blog The Metropole, where he recently authored a great article called “Heroin and Chocolate City: Black Community Responses to Drug Addiction in the Nation’s Capital, 1967-1973.” While it’s not a book, “Heroin and Chocolate City” is a deeply-researched article that offers compelling new insights into how Washington, D.C., responded to heroin use in the late 60s and early 70s, when both D.C., and heroin, were really unique.
*Note to listeners: Ryan realized later he connected Julius Hobson with SNCC. Hobson was actually associated with CORE.
Emily Dufton is the author of Grass Roots: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Marijuana in America (Basic Books, 2017). A drug historian and writer, her second book, on the development of the opioid addiction medication industry, is under contract with the University of Chicago Press.
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Indonesia is the world's second largest cigarette market: two out of three men smoke, and clove-laced tobacco cigarettes called kretek make up 95 percent of the market. To account for the staggering success of this lethal industry, Kretek Capitalism: Making, Marketing, and Consuming Clove Cigarettes in Indonesia (University of California Press, 2024) moves beyond a focus on the addictive hold of nicotine to examine how kretek manufacturers have adopted global tobacco technologies and enlisted Indonesians to labor on their behalf in fields and factories, at retail outlets and social gatherings, and online. The book charts how Sampoerna, a Philip Morris International subsidiary, uses contracts, competitions, and gender, class, and age hierarchies to extract overtime, shift, seasonal, gig, and unpaid labor from workers, influencers, artists, students, retailers, and consumers. Critically engaging nationalist claims about the commodity's cultural heritage and the jobs it supports, Marina Welker shows how global capitalism has transformed both kretek and the labor required to make and promote it. 
Marina Welker is Professor of Anthropology at Cornell University and author of Enacting the Corporation: An American Mining Firm in Post-Authoritarian Indonesia. 
Reighan Gillam is an Associate Professor in the Department of Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies at Dartmouth College. Her research examines the ways in which Afro-Brazilian media producers foment anti-racist visual politics through their image creation. She is the author of Visualizing Black Lives: Ownership and Control in Afro-Brazilian Media (University of Illinois Press).
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Is alcohol a universal feature of human society? Why is problematic in some countries and not others? How was alcohol helped build the modern state? These are just a few of the questions that sociologist John O'Brien addresses in States of Intoxication: The Place of Alcohol in Civilisation(Routledge, 2018). His book offers a broad and diverse perspective on alcohol use and suggests that booze has been an important element in developing communities and building up tax bases. In the era of "superpubs" and microbreweries, O'Brien lends insight into contemporary discussions around alcohol.
Lucas Richert is an associate professor in the School of Pharmacy at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He studies intoxicating substances and the pharmaceutical industry. He also examines the history of mental health.
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David Pozen is the Charles Keller Beekman Professor of Law at Columbia Law School and the author of the new book, The Constitution of the War on Drugs (Oxford UP, 2024). An expert in constitutional law, Pozen argues that the drug war has been an unmitigated disaster, in terms of money, efficacy, and human rights. But even as activists peel off the drug war’s more unsavory aspects through cannabis and psychedelic legalization, Pozen also argues that they’ve neglected to consider the impact America’s courts could have on rectifying oppressive drug laws.
It wasn’t always this way. The Constitution of the War on Drugs also details the “hidden history” of a brief legal moment in the late 1960s and early 1970s when lawyers effectively argued for liberalized drug policies – on the sound basis of the Constitution. The moment was eventually overturned, but Pozen argues it could be a useful historical lesson for people interested in the effects of constitutional law on the drug war today.
A link to the digital edition of The Constitution of the War on Drugs will soon be available here.
Emily Dufton is the author of Grass Roots: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Marijuana in America (Basic Books, 2017). A drug historian and writer, her second book, on the development of the opioid addiction medication industry, is coming out soon from the University of Chicago Press.
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Dr. Susan Partovi first experienced poverty medicine volunteering at a dump site in Tijuana during high school. There, she recognized the need for all people to have access to quality medical care. Over the years, she has worked in various facilities around Los Angeles County, incorporating her renegade method of going the extra mile for her patients. As Medical Director of Homeless Health Care Los Angeles, she works to provide a safety net of care for the underserved skid row community and surrounding neighborhoods.
Recognized internationally as a leader in street medicine, Dr. Partovi started documenting her patients' stories so that others could hear their voices. By addressing the practical and moral considerations when treating each patient, Dr. Partovi developed her philosophies about what it means to be a "good doctor." Along the way, she began to understand how her personal ethics evolved--from a challenging childhood and complicated relationships with her parents, through professional hurdles--often, she had to push against a system that doesn't always put the patient first.
Renegade M.D.: A Doctor's Stories from the Streets (Bookbaby, 2024) is a powerful and inspiring memoir by Dr. Susan Partovi, a renowned street doctor who has dedicated her life to treating the impoverished around the world and people experiencing homelessness on LA's skid row. Through her stories, Dr. Partovi takes us on a journey to the heart of the challenges faced by those living on the streets, and shines a light on her unwavering commitment to advocate for social justice and to provide compassionate care to some of the most vulnerable people in our society.
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