View the Table of Contents. Read the Introduction.

aThese challenging essays mark the transformation of medication from a tradition of need assessed by physicians, to a culture that far exceeds a basic threshold for drugs on demand on the part of the public.a
--"Choice"

"Nowhere do pharmaceutical companies sell more drugs, make more money, affect more lives, or wield more power than in the United States. These sophisticated but accessible essays trace the history of eight types of prescription blockbusters, from antibiotics to Viagra, and show how they have changed Americans' thinking about disease, consumer rights, and normality itself. They force us to confront the paradox of a pill-taking society that wages war on some drugs but avidly seeks out others to economically profitable if not always therapeutically benign effect."
--David Courtwright, author of "Forces of Habit" and "Dark Paradise"

aA set of fascinating case studies. . . . Anyone who has taken prescription medications can benefit by reading it.a--"Metapsychology Online Reviews"

With Americans paying more than $200 billion each year for prescription pills, the pharmaceutical business is the most profitable in the nation. The popularity of prescription drugs in recent decades has remade the doctor/patient relationship, instituting prescription-writing and pill-taking as an integral part of medical practice and everyday life.

Medicating Modern America examines the meanings behind this pharmaceutical revolution through the interconnected histories of eight of the most influential and important drugs: antibiotics, mood stabilizers, hormone replacement therapy, oral contraceptives, tranquilizers, stimulants, statins, and Viagra. All of these drugs have been popular, profitable, influential, and controversial, and the authors take a historical approach to studying their development, prescription, and consumption. This perspective locates the histories of prescription medicines in specific cultural contexts while revealing the extent to which contemporary debates about pharmaceutical drugs echo concerns voiced by Americans in the past.

Exploring the rich and multi-faceted history of pharmaceutical drugs in the United States, Medicating Modern America unveils the untold stories behind America's pharmaceutical obsession.

Contributors include: Robert Bud, Jennifer R. Fishman, Jeremy A. Greene, David Healy, Suzanne White Junod, Ilina Singh, Andrea Tone, and Elizabeth Siegel Watkins.

View the Table of Contents. Read the Introduction.

aThese challenging essays mark the transformation of medication from a tradition of need assessed by physicians, to a culture that far exceeds a basic threshold for drugs on demand on the part of the public.a
--"Choice"

"Nowhere do pharmaceutical companies sell more drugs, make more money, affect more lives, or wield more power than in the United States. These sophisticated but accessible essays trace the history of eight types of prescription blockbusters, from antibiotics to Viagra, and show how they have changed Americans' thinking about disease, consumer rights, and normality itself. They force us to confront the paradox of a pill-taking society that wages war on some drugs but avidly seeks out others to economically profitable if not always therapeutically benign effect."
--David Courtwright, author of "Forces of Habit" and "Dark Paradise"

aA set of fascinating case studies. . . . Anyone who has taken prescription medications can benefit by reading it.a--"Metapsychology Online Reviews"

With Americans paying more than $200 billion each year for prescription pills, the pharmaceutical business is the most profitable in the nation. The popularity of prescription drugs in recent decades has remade the doctor/patient relationship, instituting prescription-writing and pill-taking as an integral part of medical practice and everyday life.

Medicating Modern America examines the meanings behind this pharmaceutical revolution through the interconnected histories of eight of the most influential and important drugs: antibiotics, mood stabilizers, hormone replacement therapy, oral contraceptives, tranquilizers, stimulants, statins, and Viagra. All of these drugs have been popular, profitable, influential, and controversial, and the authors take a historical approach to studying their development, prescription, and consumption. This perspective locates the histories of prescription medicines in specific cultural contexts while revealing the extent to which contemporary debates about pharmaceutical drugs echo concerns voiced by Americans in the past.

Exploring the rich and multi-faceted history of pharmaceutical drugs in the United States, Medicating Modern America unveils the untold stories behind America's pharmaceutical obsession.

Contributors include: Robert Bud, Jennifer R. Fishman, Jeremy A. Greene, David Healy, Suzanne White Junod, Ilina Singh, Andrea Tone, and Elizabeth Siegel Watkins.

Few topics stir stronger interest than birth control and abortion. Divisive opinions abound. This informative, detailed text contains 39 writings on the history of reproduction in the U.S. The historical path of reproduction control is viewed in the contexts of politics, law, medicine, sexuality, business, and social change. Because birth control has been construed chiefly as a female responsibility, Controlling Reproduction stresses the centrality of gender in the history of reproduction and explores how and why reproduction-as a biological, social, and economic function-became a gender-assigned issue. Controlling Reproduction also includes some of the most significant debates currently guiding the study of reproduction. Students will find this work a powerful, enlightening source on women's issues and the history of birth control in the United States.

In the early twentieth century, an era characterized by unprecedented industrial strife and violence, thousands of employers across the United States pioneered a new policy of labor relations called welfare work. The paternalistic practices and forms of compensation they introduced were designed not only to control workers but also to advertise the humanity of corporate capitalism and thus to thwart the advance of legislated reform. In a penetrating contribution to a burgeoning literature on the development of the U.S. welfare state, Andrea Tone offers a new interpretation of the role of welfare capitalism in the shaping of that development.

Drugs for anxiety are a billion-dollar business in the United States. Yet in 1955, when the prescription tranquilizer Miltown became available, pharmaceutical executives worried that there was no market. In "The Age of Anxiety," historian Andrea Tone provides a comprehensive account of the rise of America's prescription drug culture through the lens of our complicated relationship with tranquilizers.