R4R @ Rutgers: Reading for Recovery

Cannabiz tells one the most important political and business stories of our generation: the transformation of a counterculture movement into a growth industry with staggering potential. Charting the rise of medical marijuana in California and 14 other states, award-winning journalist John Geluardi vividly recounts the movement’s early activism, its legal challenges and victories, and its emergence as a commercial and political force.

Standage avoids a dry look at history by viewing it through a new lens: drinks. The technology editor of the Economist pairs various eras with a signature beverage and notes the effect of each. This highly engaging look at beer, wine, hard spirits, tea, coffee, and cola takes a sweeping yet succinct look at the past. Standage is able to cover a lot of ground by focusing more on the relationship between drink and society than history in general, keeping the book entertaining.

Upon finishing the first draft of this biography of Stuart Shorter, an ex-junkie ex-homeless friend, author Alexander Masters was told by Stuart himself that it should be more interesting, "like what Tom Clancy writes." In the end, he assembled a heartbreaking and deeply personal account of an extraordinary life without giving in to sentimentality. Unfortunately, the award-winning finished product was never seen by Stuart, who stepped in front of a train before it was completed. Masters takes an unconventional look at an unconventional life, starting from Stuart’s death and leading to the traumatic events that drove him to drug use and homelessness.

New Yorker cartoonist Jack Ziegler compiled 122 hilarious cartoons about drinking. Jokes range from the silly to sidesplitting literary jokes ("Meanwhile at the Cafe de la Mort: Ernest Hemingway is ridiculing Oscar Wilde's wine spritzer while Truman Capote takes notes").

Award-winning scientist Stephen Braun inspects the relationship between coffee and booze and the people that love them. As funny as it is informative, this collection of stories, trivia, and history chronicles the effect that caffeine and alcohol have on the human body without getting bogged down in scientific detail.

One of the most important relationships that human beings have with plants is changing our consciousness -- consider the plants that give us coffee, tea, chocolate, and nicotine. Sacred Bliss challenges traditional attitudes about cannabis by tracing its essential role in the spiritual and curative traditions in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe, and the Americas from prehistory to the present day. In highlighting the continued use of cannabis around the globe, Sacred Bliss offers compelling evidence of cannabis as an entheogen used for thousands of years to evoke peak-experiences, or moments of expanded perception or spiritual awareness. Today, the growing utilization of medical cannabis to alleviate the pain and symptoms of physical illness raises the possibility of using cannabis to treat the mind along with the body. By engaging sacred and secular texts from around the world, Sacred Bliss demonstrates that throughout religious history, cannabis has offered access to increased imagination and creativity, heightened perspective and insight, and deeper levels of thought."

Drawing parallels between the current drug war and the “Gin Craze” in 18th Century Britain, Warner outlines the history of the popular spirit. This engrossing account of “the original urban drug” follows the drink from its introduction to the eight failed reforms that Parliament attempted to institute. The light, conversational tone that Warner employs keeps the story moving, and would be a great read for anyone with an interest in the relationship between politics, drugs, and society.