Books by "David T. Courtwright"
7 books found
This go-to resource on substance abuse supplies the broad background knowledge and historical information needed to understand this important sociological issue and provides readers with a range of additional sources for continuing their study of the topic. From the pharmaceuticals advertised on television for various specific medical conditions; to alcohol, which is consumed regularly as a societal norm; to illicit drugs such as cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine; to marijuana, which is becoming legal in an increasing number of U.S. states, drugs are all around us and are ingrained in our culture. The difficult reality is that any drug is a substance that can be abused. Substance Abuse: A Reference Handbook provides a detailed discussion of the history of substance abuse, covers the classification of drugs, explains how drugs work in the body, includes a general survey of both legal and illegal drugs, and describes the methods of substance abuse prevention and treatment. Readers receive a comprehensive introduction to the broad topic of substance abuse and a variety of additional resources with which to conduct extensive research. In addition to describing the nature of licit and illicit drugs, the beneficial and harmful effects drugs can have on the human body, and factors that may lead to abuse and/or substance abuse, this book covers subtopics such as drug testing in a variety of settings including the workplace and sports, drug control mechanisms, and the debates relating to the legalization of drugs such as medical and recreational marijuana. The book also offers primary source resources that enable readers to directly examine the text of documents, such as significant laws and court cases dealing with aspects of substance abuse, alcohol prohibition amendments, the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, a series of memoranda from the U.S. Department of Justice regarding the prosecution of marijuana cases, and state doctor shopping laws.
An award-winning scholar's sweeping history of American secularism, from Jefferson to Trump "Insights that are both illuminating and alarming."--Linda Greenhouse, New York Review of Books "An essential book for understanding today's culture wars. Sehat's clear-eyed and elegant narrative will change how you think about our supposedly secular age."--Molly Worthen, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill In This Earthly Frame, David Sehat narrates the making of American secularism through its most prominent proponents and most significant detractors. He shows how its foundations were laid in the U.S. Constitution and how it fully emerged only in the twentieth century. Religious and nonreligious Jews, liberal Protestants, apocalyptic sects like the Jehovah's Witnesses, and antireligious activists all used the courts and the constitutional language of the First Amendment to create the secular order. Then, over the past fifty years, many religious conservatives turned against that order, emphasizing their religious freedom. Avoiding both polemic and lament, Sehat offers a powerful reinterpretation of American secularism and a clear framework for understanding the religiously infused conflict of the present.
“Bang your head! Metal Health’ll drive you mad!” — Quiet Riot Like an episode of VH1’s Behind the Music on steroids, Bang Your Head is an epic history of every band and every performer that has proudly worn the Heavy Metal badge. Whether headbanging is your guilty pleasure or you firmly believe that this much-maligned genre has never received the respect it deserves, Bang Your Head is a must-read that pays homage to a music that’s impossible to ignore, especially when being blasted through a sixteen-inch woofer. Charting the genesis of early metal with bands like Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden; the rise of metal to the top of the Billboard charts and heavy MTV rotation featuring the likes of Def Leppard and Metallica; hitting its critical peak with bands like Guns N’ Roses; disgrace during the “hair metal” ’80s; and a demise fueled by the explosion of the Seattle grunge scene and the “alternative” revolution, Bang Your Head is as funny as it is informative and proves once and for all that there is more to metal than sin, sex, and spandex. To write this exhaustive history, David Konow spent three years interviewing the bands, wives, girlfriends, ex-wives, groupies, managers, record company execs, and anyone who was or is a part of the metal scene, including many of the band guys often better known for their escapades and bad behavior than for their musicianship. Nothing is left unsaid in this jaw-dropping, funny, and entertaining chronicle of power ballads, outrageous outfits, big hair, bigger egos, and testosterone-drenched debauchery.
A global history of the acquisition of progressively more potent means of altering ordinary waking consciousness, this book is the first to provide the big picture of the discovery, interchange, and exploitation of the planet's psychoactive resources, from tea and kola to opiates and amphetamines.
This book offers an explosive look at violence in America--why it is so prevalent, and what and who are responsible. David Courtwright takes the long view of his subject, developing the historical pattern of violence and disorder in this country. Where there is violent and disorderly behavior, he shows, there are plenty of men, largely young and single. What began in the mining camp and bunkhouse has simply continued in the urban world of today, where many young, armed, intoxicated, honor-conscious bachelors have reverted to frontier conditions. Violent Land combines social science with an engrossing narrative that spans and reinterprets the history of violence and social disorder in America. Courtwright focuses on the origins, consequences, and eventual decline of frontier brutality. Though these rough days have passed, he points out that the frontier experience still looms large in our national self-image--and continues to influence the extent and type of violence in America as well as our collective response to it. Broadly interdisciplinary, looking at the interplay of biological, social, and historical forces behind the dark side of American life, this book offers a disturbing diagnosis of violence in our society.
"Aviation's frontier stage lasted a scant three decades, then vanished as flying became a settled experience. Sky as Frontier recreates that pioneer world and shows how commercial and military imperatives destroyed it by routinizing flight."--Jacket.
"A fascinating excursion into a past that, though relatively recent, has long been hidden from view."—Kirkus Reviews (starred review) • 2024 Women's National Book Association Great Group Reads pick A multigenerational story of hope and resilience, The Garretts of Columbia is an American history of Black struggle, sacrifice, and achievement. At the heart of David Nicholson's beautifully written and carefully researched book, The Garretts of Columbia: A Black South Carolina Family from Slavery to the Dawn of Integration, are his great-grandparents, Casper George Garrett and his wife, Anna Maria. Papa, as Garrett was known to his family, was a professor at Allen University, a lawyer, and an editor of three newspapers. Dubbed Black South Carolina's "most respected disliked man," he was always ready to attack those he believed disloyal to his race. When his quixotic idealism and acerbic editorials resulted in his dismissal from Allen, his wife, who was called Mama, came into her own as the family bread winner. She was appointed supervisor of rural colored schools, trained teachers, and oversaw the construction of schoolhouses. At 51, this remarkable woman learned to drive, taking to the back roads outside Columbia to supervise classrooms, conduct literacy drives, and instruct rural farm women in the basics of home economics. Though Papa and Mama came of age in the bleak Jim Crow years after Reconstruction, they believed in the possibility of America. Resolutely supporting their country during the First World War, they sent three of their sons to serve. One son wrote a musical with Langston Hughes during the Harlem Renaissance. Another son became a dentist. A daughter earned a doctorate in French. And the family persevered. But, for all that Papa and Mama did to make Columbia a nurturing place, their sons and daughters joined the Great Migration, scattering north in search of the freedom the South denied them. The Garretts embraced the hope of America and experienced the melancholy of a family separated by the search for opportunity and belonging. On the basis of decades of research and thousands of family letters—which include Mama's tart-tongued observations of friends and neighbors—The Garretts of Columbia is family history as American history, rich with pivotal events viewed through the lens of the Garretts's lives.