Christopher Finan. (2017). Drunks: An American History. Beacon Press.

Christopher Finan. 2017. Drunks: An American History. Beacon Press.

Christopher Finan, Drunks: An American History. Beacon Press, 2017.

Christopher Finan. Drunks: An American History. Beacon Press, 2017.

OverDrive Product Record

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1. • value: recovery
2. • value: happiness
3. • value: Addiction
4. • value: mental health
5. • value: Alcoholism
6. • value: World History
7. • value: Codependency
8. • value: human nature
9. • value: Neurology
10. • value: psychology
11. • value: Positive Thinking
12. • value: psychiatry
13. • value: alcoholics anonymous
14. • value: History
15. • value: mental illness
16. • value: adult children of alcoholics
17. • value: depression
18. • value: AA
19. • value: Narcotics Anonymous
20. • value: history books
21. • value: historical books
22. • value: gifts for history buffs
23. • value: mental health books
24. • value: psychology books
25. • value: mental illness books
26. • value: addiction books
27. • value: psychology book
28. • value: history gifts
29. • value: history buff gifts
30. • value: history teacher gifts
31. • value: american history gifts

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Drunks

fullDescription

Reveals the history of our struggle with alcoholism and the emergence of a search for sobriety that is as old as our nation.
In Drunks, Christopher Finan introduces us to a colorful cast of characters who were integral in America’s moral journey to understanding alcoholism. There's the remarkable Iroquois leader named Handsome Lake, a drunk who stopped drinking and dedicated his life to helping his people achieve sobriety. In the early nineteenth century, the idealistic and energetic “Washingtonians,” a group of reformed alcoholics, led the first national movement to save men like themselves. After the Civil War, doctors began to recognize that chronic drunkenness is an illness, and Dr. Leslie Keeley invented a “gold cure” that was dispensed at more than a hundred clinics around the country. But most Americans rejected a scientific explanation of alcoholism. A century after the ignominious death of Charles Adams came Carrie Nation. The wife of a drunk, she destroyed bars with a hatchet in her fury over what alcohol had done to her family. Prohibition became the law of the land, but nothing could stop the drinking. Finan also tells the dramatic story of Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith, who helped each other stay sober and then created AA, which survived its tumultuous early years and finally proved that alcoholics could stay sober for a lifetime.
This is narrative history at its best: entertaining and authoritative, an important portrait of one of America’s great liberation movements and essential reading for anyone involved in the addiction community.

reviews

1. • premium: False
   • source: Kirkus Reviews
   • content: "An appropriately harrowing account of booze and its discontents...A worthy treatment of recovery movements in American history, unsung heroes and all."
2. • premium: False
   • source: Publishers Weekly
   • content: "A spirited look at the history of drinking and alcoholism in America... offers captivating stories in a well-researched, in-depth manner, shining a light on a topic well worth exploring in detail."
3. • premium: False
   • source: Library Journal
   • content: "The vignettes Finan selected provide relevant facts about important players associated with the history of alcoholism and how it has been treated in the United States. An interesting read for fans of American history."
4. • premium: False
   • source: Richard Rhodes, Pulitzer Prize recipient for The Making of the Atomic Bomb
   • content: "Drunks is a lively, engaging, and enlightening account of a major strain (in several senses of the word) of the American character. We drank our way to nationhood, and some of us drank too much. Cheers!"
5. • premium: False
   • source: Lisa Smith, author of Girl Walks Out of a Bar
   • content: "Drunks is a fascinating history of the recovery movement that allowed me to consider my own sobriety in a broader context. Chris Finan recounts in entertaining and compelling style the experiences of those who fought to have alcoholism recognized as an illness and broke barriers in trying to treat it. I was transported throughout this journey and would like to think I might have joined the 'Marthas,' a group of mid-nineteenth-century women who were on the front lines of the battle against the deadly ravages of alcoholism. Finan has written an outstanding book that should take its place alongside the definitive texts detailing other medical and cultural issues in American society."
6. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     April 10, 2017
     In a spirited look at the history of drinking and alcoholism in America, Finan (From the Palmer Raids to the Patriot Act) traces the complex relationship between people and their dependency on drink from the 19th century up to the 21st century. It’s a sobering portrait of the power alcohol has on those addicted to it. Finan chronicles the lives and struggles of those who have fought to free themselves and others like them, showing just how far society has come in dealing with the issue. Here, readers will find the earliest temperance societies, the rise and fall of Prohibition, the creation of the Salvation Army, and, perhaps most significantly, the birth and evolution of Alcoholics Anonymous and the vast treatment industry it spawned. “The fight against addiction is one of America’s great liberation movements. Like the battles for racial equality, women’s rights, and sexual freedom, its history is marked by periods of progress and devastating reverses,” Finan notes, humanistically rejecting the notion that addicts are responsible for their plight. Finan’s delivery can be a bit dry, but he offers captivating stories in a well-researched, in-depth manner, shining a light on a topic well worth exploring in detail. Agent: Jill Marr, Sandra Dijkstra Literary.

7. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     May 1, 2017
     An appropriately harrowing account of booze and its discontents.Alcohol has been with us always and, with it, day-after regrets. One early regret, writes Finan (From the Palmer Raids to the Patriot Act: A History of the Fight for Free Speech in America, 2007, etc.), director of the American Booksellers for Free Expression, came from a Seneca leader named Handsome Lake, who saw what ravages alcohol was wreaking among his people and preached a gospel of abstinence: "Whiskey is the great engine which the bad Spirit uses to introduce Witchcraft and may other evils amongst Indians." So effective was the message that Handsome Lake was able to deter a generation of followers. Today, Native people, as well as Americans of all ethnicities, turn to AA for help, and Finan tells a respectful, demythologized version of the story of Bill Wilson and Bob Smith, who founded the organization in an effort to keep each other sober after some scarifying cold-turkey moments led them to realize "that they had been at their lowest point when they discovered a power greater than themselves that made it possible for them to stop drinking." Some of Finan's case studies are a little repetitive and tedious, but they all add up to a trajectory of recognition that alcohol is a cause of social and physical harm, with huge repercussions. The author notes that whereas AA members cloaked themselves in anonymity precisely because of the prejudice against hiring drunks, whether wet or dry, alcoholism has lost some of its stigma as it has been recognized as a medical condition. With that, however, peer support has given way to professionalized treatment, crowding out "the sober alcoholics who had once played such a prominent role as counselors." Finan closes with a gimlet-eyed look at some of AA's alternatives, including the recent movement to transform alcoholic drinking into social drinking, forgoing the old model of complete abstinence. A worthy treatment of recovery movements in American history, unsung heroes and all.

     COPYRIGHT(2017) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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Reveals the history of our struggle with alcoholism and the emergence of a search for sobriety that is as old as our nation.
In Drunks, Christopher Finan introduces us to a colorful cast of characters who were integral in America’s moral journey to understanding alcoholism. There's the remarkable Iroquois leader named Handsome Lake, a drunk who stopped drinking and dedicated his life to helping his people achieve sobriety. In the early nineteenth century, the idealistic and energetic “Washingtonians,” a group of reformed alcoholics, led the first national movement to save men like themselves. After the Civil War, doctors began to recognize that chronic drunkenness is an illness, and Dr. Leslie Keeley invented a “gold cure” that was dispensed at more than a hundred clinics around the country. But most Americans rejected a scientific explanation of alcoholism. A century after the ignominious death of Charles Adams came Carrie Nation....

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   • description: Psychology / Mental Health
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   • description: Psychology / Psychopathology / Addiction