Books like Outsiders by Howard Saul Becker

Explores how America’s common vices—smoking, alcohol, gambling, sex, and drug use—evolved from personal habits into a vast, profitable social industry that reshaped public morality and policy.

"Can't Find My Way Home is a history of illicit drug use in America in the second half of the twentieth century and a personal journey through the drug experience. It's the story of how America got high, the epic tale of how the American Century transformed into the Great Stoned Age." "Can't Find My Way Home tells this story by weaving together first-person accounts and historical background into a narrative vast in scope yet rich in detail. Among those who describe their experiments with consciousness are Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary, Robert Stone, Wavy Gravy, Grace Slick, Oliver Stone, Peter Coyote, David Crosby, and many others from Haight Ashbury to Studio 54 to housing projects and rave warehouses." "But Can't Find My Way Home does not neglect the recovery movement, the war on drugs, and the ongoing debate over drug policy. And even as Martin Torgoff tells the story of his own addiction and recovery, he neither romanticizes nor demonizes drugs. If he finds them less dangerous than the moral crusaders say they are, he also finds them less benign than advocates insist."--BOOK JACKET.

The American Disease is a classic study of the development of drug laws in the United States. Supporting the theory that Americans' attitudes toward drugs have followed a cyclic pattern of tolerance and restraint, author David F. Musto examines the relations between public outcry and the creation of prohibitive drug laws from the end of the Civil War to the present day. This third edition contains a new chapter and preface that cover the renewed debate on policy and drug legislation from the end of the Reagan administration to the present Clinton administration.