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