Skip to content
You are not logged in |Login  
     
Limit search to available items
Book Cover
book
BookBook
Author Andreas, Peter, 1965- author.

Title Killer high : a history of war in six drugs / Peter Andreas.

Publication Info. New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2020]
©2020

Copies

Location Call No. Status
 New Britain, Main Library - Non Fiction  616.98 AND    Check Shelf
 West Hartford, Noah Webster Library - Non Fiction  616.98 ANDREAS    Check Shelf
Description ix, 338 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm
Summary "There is growing alarm over how drugs increasingly empower terrorists, insurgents, traffickers, and gangs. But by looking back not just years and decades but centuries, Peter Andreas reveals that the drugs-conflict nexus is actually an old story, and that powerful states have been its biggest beneficiaries. In his path-breaking Killer High, Andreas shows how six psychoactive drugs--ranging from old to relatively new, mild to potent, licit to illicit, natural to synthetic--have proven to be particularly important war ingredients. This sweeping history tells the story of war from antiquity to the modern age through the lens of alcohol, tobacco, caffeine, opium, amphetamines, and cocaine. Beer and wine drenched ancient and medieval battlefields, and the distilling revolution lubricated the conquest and ethnic cleansing of the New World. Tobacco became globalized through soldiering, with soldiers hooked on smoking and governments hooked on taxing it. Caffeine and opium fueled imperial expansion and warfare. The commercialization of amphetamines in the twentieth century energized soldiers to fight harder, longer, and faster, while cocaine stimulated an increasingly militarized drug war that produced casualty numbers surpassing most civil wars. As Andreas demonstrates, armed conflict has become progressively more "drugged" with the introduction, mass production, and global spread of mind-altering substances. As a result, we cannot understand the history of war without including drugs, and we similarly cannot understand the history of drugs without including war. From ancient brews and battles to meth and modern warfare, drugs and war have grown up together and become addicted to each other. "-- Provided by publisher.
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 269-316) and index.
Contents Introduction: How drugs made war and war made drugs -- Drunk on the front -- Where there's smoke there's war -- Caffeinated conflict -- Opium, empire, and geopolitics -- Speed warfare -- Cocaine wars -- Conclusion: The drugged battlefields of the twenty-first century.
Subject Medicine, Military -- History -- Miscellanea.
Soldiers -- Drug use -- History.
Soldiers -- Substance use -- History.
Drug utilization -- History.
Drug abuse -- History.
Military art and science -- Miscellanea.
Military history.
HISTORY / Military / General.
Drug abuse. (OCoLC)fst00898480
Drug utilization. (OCoLC)fst00898740
Medicine, Military. (OCoLC)fst01015285
Military art and science. (OCoLC)fst01020874
Military history. (OCoLC)fst01021222
Soldiers -- Drug use. (OCoLC)fst01125257
Genre/Form History. (OCoLC)fst01411628
Added Title History of war in six drugs
ISBN 9780190463014 (hardback)
0190463015 (hardback)
-->
Add a Review