Dave:
 
I can't speak for others, but I finished my dissertation on the history of opiate addiction in 1979 (published three years later as Dark Paradise). I'm sure that I never would have chosen that topic had it not been for the Nixon-era ferment in drug treatment and drug policy. There was also a lot going on in the alcohol and public health fields that may have contributed to a similar lagged scholarly effect, with 1979 the coincidental "modal" year for that wave of scholarship. But wave there surely was.
 
For the sake of comparison, think about the history of slavery. Several blockbusters appeared in the mid-1970s (e.g., Fogel and Engerman, Genovese, Edmund Morgan's American Slavery, American Freedom). Why? Surely the renewed interest of major scholars in the subject had something to do with the centrality of race and civil rights in American History in the 1960s. That interest, with suitable time for research and editing, eventually produced several monumental works. My hunch is that new interest and new approaches (not to say new funding) in the drug and alcohol fields in the late 1960s and early 1970s bore historical fruit about ten years later. But I could be projecting my own experience, and so I offer this explanation only as a hypothesis.
 
David Courtwright
________________________________

From: Alcohol and Drugs History Society on behalf of Dave Trippel
Sent: Mon 8/28/2006 2:37 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: 1979



Given the trials and tribulations in government from 1964-1980 for "The
Quest for Drug Control" (Musto/Korsmeyer, 2002) you all probably felt some
deeper and more detailed historical resurgence, perspective, and analysis
might help. No?

Dave Trippel

----- Original Message -----
From: "Courtwright, David" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, August 28, 2006 12:47 PM
Subject: Re: 1979


Ron,

OK, so why was 1979 a banner year? Coincidence? The fruits of the golden age
of sociology and social history? Or maybe something to do with a long,
steady rise in per capital alcohol consumption that (if my memory serves)
didn't level off until sometime in the early 1980s?

I'm teaching a historiography seminar this semester and I have questions
like this on the brain.

David T. Courtwright
John A. Delaney Presidential Professor
Dept. of History
University of North Florida
Jacksonville, FL 32224-2645
Home office: (904) 745 0530
University office: (904) 620-1872
Fax: (904) 620-1018
Email: [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>

________________________________

From: Alcohol and Drugs History Society on behalf of Jack Blocker
Sent: Mon 8/28/2006 9:51 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: 1979


Of course 1979 was also the year the Alcohol and Temperance History Group
was founded, at the annual meeting of the AHA, in New York.


----- Original Message -----
From: Ron Roizen <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Monday, August 28, 2006 9:30 am
Subject: 1979
To: [log in to unmask]

> Listmates, and particularly those who've been in the field for a
> spell:
>
>
> Listmates:
>
>
>
> A few years ago it got into my head that 1979 was a something of
> a banner
> year for alcohol history and alcohol social studies
> publications, an annus
> mirabilis.  I set upon compiling a list of 1979's various
> importantcontributions to the literature.  The list got to
> be pretty long and pretty
> impressive.  But then I stopped adding to it; and worse,
> the list got lost
> two or three expired computers ago.  I'd like to try to
> recreate the list,
> this time a little more efficiently.  So I'd like to ask
> the list to help me
> recompile it.  I'm offering five items of would-be "chum"
> for the list
> below, just to maybe get things started.  Please send only
> contributionsthat you regard as significant work, published in
> 1979 only.
>
>
>
> Thank you.
>
>
>
> Ron Roizen
>
>
>
> 1979 List:
>
>
>
> Tyrrell, Sobering-up (1979)
>
> Kurtz, Not-God (1979)
>
> Rorabaugh, Alcoholic Republic (1979)
>
> Blocker, Alcohol, Reform and Society (1979)
>
> Kyvig, David E., Repealing National Prohibition (1979)
>
>
>
>


Jack Blocker
History, Huron University College
The University of Western Ontario
1349 Western Road
London, Ontario N6G 1H3 Canada
Phone (519) 438-7224, ext. 249
Fax (519) 438-3938