Excellent... stresses the dynamics of sex roles and social class that underlie the culture of psychotropic drug use. He grounds the success of tranquilizers in the consumer culture that emerged after World War II, emphasizing the shrewd marketing techniques that allowed drug companies to separate their products, which appealed to a largely white, middle-class constituency, from the illegal drugs that were used by marginalized racial, ethnic, and class groups. Drug companies also promoted the tranquilizers in ways that reinforced traditional sex roles, implying that their products would allow men to strengthen their authority at home and in the office and would allow women to embrace their duties as wives and mothers.
(Allan V. Horwitz, Ph.D.
New England Journal of Medicine 2009)
By placing human action at the heart of this culturally rich history, Herzberg has written a masterful account of the travels of 'happy pills' from Madison Avenue to your medicine cabinet.
(
Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 2009)
Do read this book. It will make you even more thoughtful about your next prescription for antidepressants.
(
British Medical Journal 2009)
Herzberg does an excellent job of expounding on the interplay of social, cultural, and commercial forces that influenced the rise and fall of these blockbuster drugs.
(
Journal of Clinical Investigation 2009)
Herzberg deftly explains the dispensing of 'happy pills' within the prism of Cold War class consciousness while the US fought a discordant contemporaneous 'war on drugs.'
(
Choice 2009)
[Avoids] heated debates between advocates of psychotropic medication such as Peter Kramer and vocal critics such as Peter Breggin and David Healy. Instead, Herzberg shows us how the meanings attached to such drugs evolved from a complex interplay of shifting interests, including those of marketers, patients and doctors. Although the story is a complicated one, it is highly readable and Herzberg tells it using plain, non-technical language.
(
Metapsychology 2009)
The book admirably achieves its main aim: describing the reception of tranquilizers in the popular imagination of postwar America. It also draws attention to the important issue of happiness as an increasingly medicalized commodity in that context.
(Nicolas Rasmussen
Bulletin of the History of Medicine 2009)
A brilliant book, rich and mind-bending... Unlike most others on the subject, Happy Pills seeks not to condemn or celebrate but to understand. I find it hard not to praise it too much, not to become a marketing tool urging its wider distribution and intellectual consumption.
(Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz
Business History Review 2009)
Herzberg eloquently guides us through the world of happy pills in post–World War II America... Happy Pills is an engaging, insightful, and well-researched book that makes a strong contribution to the historical and social study of science.
(Lorna Ronald
Journal of American History 2009)
Herzberg is a a social historian and meticulous auditor of the progress of psychotropic medication in the USA... On the one hand these drugs offer escape from the stresses and strains of socio-economic relations; on the other hand they are a direct product of those relations.
(David Pilgrim
Sociology of Health and Illness 2009)
Truly a dizzying array of data on the history of the science, commerce, marketing, medicine, psychiatry and psychology, all aspects of the history of the pills, is a major achievement... Herzberg's book, exemplifying history of medicine as a thoroughly interdisciplinary field, is important and timely.
(Susan K. Rishworth
Pharmacy in History 2009)
An incisive cultural history that documents the transformation of these medications into 'happy pills' for the middle class.
(Peter Conrad
Contexts 2010)
Welcome and informative... a kind of protest against the tendency to assume that the issues surrounding psychiatric drug use can be reduced to scientific or technological factors.
(
American Historical Review 2010)
This well-crafted book combines historical perspectives with the enduring issues of consumerism, patients' rights, ethical principles, and the role of pharmaceutical companies in marketing medicines.
(
Technology and Culture 2010)
Highlights important implications of the cultural embrace of lifestyle drugs for dealing with everyday problems of living.
(
BioSocieties 2010)
A timely book, persuasive and well documented.
(
Psychiatric Services 2009)
This extremely well-written and well-researched book demands, and deserves, a wide audience.
(
Medical History 2010)
Written with verve, it offers myriad ways to understand the complexity and range of its subject. Not only does it illuminate American drug cultures; it also demonstrates the rich interplay of invention, marketing, advertising, expertise, regulation, medical practice, and consumption.
(Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz
Business History Review 2009)
An excellent starting point from which to explore many changes in post-war American psychiatry, changes that have affected the way in which we conceptualize, analyse and treat mental illness.
(Matthew Smith
History of Psychiatry )
[An] intriguing book.
(David Pilgrim
Sociology of Health and Illness )
Herzberg steers a very steady course through dangerous waters. Happy Pills is a beautiful read, its thesis engaging, and its style well-paced and fresh. Its non-technical language and focus on the interaction between drugs and the broader culture should appeal to many readers regardless of specialization.
(David Healy, author of
Mania: A Short History of Bipolar Disorder )
Happy Pills in America offers an extraordinary analysis of how tranquilizers and antidepressants were as much a part of the post-World War II consumer society as suburban living and the car culture. Whether Americans bought or sold, advertised or prescribed, embraced or condemned these feel-good pills, they participated in commodifying the 'good life.'
(Lizabeth Cohen, author of
A Consumers' Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America )
David Herzberg follows the rise of psychiatric medicines, from Miltown in the 1950s to Valium in the 1970s to Prozac in the 1990s. After a market for psychoactive drugs emerged in the postwar consumer culture, "happy pills" became embroiled in Cold War gender battles and the explosive politics of the "war against drugs". In a dramatic campaign against Valium addiction, feminists brought the two issues together in the 1970s. The Prozac phenomenon, too, owed as much to commerce and culture as to scientific achievement. Happy Pills is an invaluable look at how the commercialization of medicine has transformed American culture since the end of World War II.
"Excellent... stresses the dynamics of sex roles and social class that underlie the culture of psychotropic drug use."— New England Journal of Medicine
"Draws attention to the important issue of happiness as an increasingly medicalized commodity in that context."— Bulletin of the History of Medicine
"By placing human action at the heart of this culturally rich history, Herzberg has written a masterful account of the travels of 'happy pills' from Madison Avenue to your medicine cabinet."— Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences
"A brilliant book, rich and mind-bending... Unlike most others on the subject, Happy Pills seeks not to condemn or celebrate but to understand."— Business History Review
"Herzberg eloquently guides us through the world of happy pills in post–World War II America... Engaging, insightful, and well researched."— Journal of American History
David Herzberg is an assistant professor of history at the State University of New York at Buffalo.
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