Sorry for the repeat, folks, but I realized after sending that the name of
the publisher is Chestnut Health Systems.  Robin
 
Let me recommend to all and sundry a new book:
   William L. White, Slaying the Dragon: The History of Addiction Treatment
and Recovery in America.  Bloomington, IL: Chestnut Health
Systems/Lighthouse Institute, 1998.
   Available for USD $19.95 + $5 shipping and handling (+$1.40 state
sales tax for IL residents) from:
Lighthouse Health Systems, 720 West Chestnut St., Bloomington, IL
61701. Phone orders 1-888-547-8271
 
   This 390-page monster is the product of a 10-year labour of love.  The
author seems to have read and draws on nearly all the secondary
literature (and a lot of the primary sources) on the history of U.S.
treatment of inebriety (drugs as well as alcohol), and struggles heroically
also to make sense of the many facets of treatment and mutual-help
efforts in recent decades.  I can't imagine a reader who will not learn
something new from it.  It is a sourcebook of evidence for all points of
view on treatment approaches and institutions and on AA and
antecedent and contemporary movements.  The rhetorical framing varies
somewhat, between that of the historian, that of the sociologist, that of
the treatment outcome and system analyst, and that of the participant
observer.  But it is throughout a good and honest effort both to tell the
story of events and ideologies, in all its twists and turns, and to make
sense of them.
   In the cover photo, the members of the Keeley League No. 1 of Dwight
Illinois appear in full 19th-century business dress under a large sign:
"The law must recognize a leading fact, medical not penal treatment
reforms the drunkard".    Robin Room