Reviews
Dr. Lerner’s account of the long relationship between the automobile and the beverage—on both a corporate and a consumer level—is dogged, comprehensive and occasionally quite surprising.
In the libertarian society of the US, Americans acknowledge their rights, which include driving automobiles and consuming alcoholic beverages. Innocuous independently, combined they have plagued the country for over 100 years.
Well written and passionately argued, the text explores how Americans' historic "love of alcohol, love of driving, and more abstractly, love of freedom and individual liberties" spawned a complex, centurylong, and at times self-defeating battle with drunk drivers.
Lerner has done a beautiful job of tracing the degree to which celebrity patients have reflected and shaped the modern American understanding of doctors, patients, and illness.
Lerner has created a powerful prism through his thoughtful exploration of celebrity illness, highlighting societal and cultural forces that widely affect public and private health care decisions.
We can learn quite a bit about our society, culture, and values from the way celebrities' illnesses are publicly portrayed... Lerner is at his best when he uses his considerable narrative skills to place these stories into their broader historical, cultural, and ethical contexts.
In Lerner's capable hands, these dozen stories in their retelling are both colorfully dramatic narratives, ripped from the headlines (as the saying now goes) and also probing samples of historically specific contingencies and shifting attitudes.
Book Details
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction: What's the Harm?
1. The Discovery of Drunk Driving
2. Science and Government Enter the Fray
3. The MADD Mothers Take Charge
4. The Movement Matures and Splinters
5
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction: What's the Harm?
1. The Discovery of Drunk Driving
2. Science and Government Enter the Fray
3. The MADD Mothers Take Charge
4. The Movement Matures and Splinters
5. Lawyers, Libertarians, and the Liquor LobbyFight Back
6. More (and More) Tragedies
Afterword
Notes
Index