{"title":"Alexandra Chasin","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"selling-out-book-alexandra-chasin-9780312239268","title":"Selling Out","description":"In the 1990s gay and lesbian culture went mainstream, from Ellen's coming out episode to the push for same sex marriage. At the same time, the gay market has become one of the most sought after by advertisers like Bud Light, Absolut, Benson and Hedges, and even Ikea. But in its eagerness to be embraced by the mainstream, the gay movement's political identity has been whitewashed. Identity politics and identity based consumption tend to serve the interests of white, middle class men, and tend to underserve the interest of women, people of colour, and the poor. Alexandra Chasin's provocative indictment of the marketing of a sanitized queerness may set off a wave of controversy among all readers, gay and straight.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49583872311569,"sku":"GOR013719740","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50349536182545,"sku":"CIN0312239262G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0312239262.jpg?v=1751164836"},{"product_id":"selling-out-book-alexandra-chasin-9780312214494","title":"Selling Out","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":50559284314385,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50559286771985,"sku":"CIN0312214499VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0312214499.jpg?v=1751196262"},{"product_id":"brief-book-alexandra-chasin-9781937543242","title":"Brief","description":"In a funny, angry, hyper-articulate monologue, an art vandal makes a passionate plea to a judge: you, the reader. The vandal has been charged with defacing a masterpiece of modern art, and asks you to consider the following argument: Maybe the way we turn out is less the fault of our parents and more the effect of larger cultural and historical influences - maybe history is the real culprit. Rich with references to the high art, mass culture, political ideologies, and military maneuvers of the post-war era, from the Cold War to the introduction of television, Brief chronicles the formation of an art vandal, until the story explodes in an enactment of temporary insanity. \u003cbr\u003e The book seems to be awake and refuses to stop mutating. All in all, it's a high-level act, and one that bears multiple readings almost immediately. - Blake Butler, \u003ci\u003eVice\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Chasin's fiction is playful and hilarious and at the same time dense and challenging. - Robert Lopez, \u003ci\u003eThe Believer\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Chasin's book unwrites definitions, and that's its real power. So don't allow me to define it for you; better that you pick up your own copy and read for yourself its 178-page mesmerizing brief without the safety of knowing what you should think about it. - Jacob Paul, \u003ci\u003e Fiction Writers Review\u003c\/i\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51207314506001,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51207316439313,"sku":"NIN9781937543242","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1937543242.jpg?v=1751028808"},{"product_id":"assassin-of-youth-book-alexandra-chasin-9780226276977","title":"Assassin of Youth","description":"Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics from its establishment in 1930 until his retirement in 1962, Harry J. Anslinger is the United States' little known first drug czar. Anslinger was a profligate propagandist with a flair for demonizing racial and immigrant groups and perhaps best known for his zealous pursuit of harsh drug penalties and his particular animus for marijuana users. But what made Anslinger who he was, and what cultural trends did he amplify and institutionalize? Having just passed the hundredth anniversary of the Harrison Act which consolidated prohibitionist drug policy and led to the carceral state we have today and even as public doubts about the drug war continue to grow, now is the perfect time to evaluate Anslinger's social, cultural, and political legacy. In Assassin of Youth, Alexandra Chasin gives us a lyrical, digressive, funny, and ultimately riveting quasi-biography of Anslinger. Her treatment of the man, his times, and the world that arose around and through him is part cultural history, part kaleidoscopic meditation. Each of the short chapters is anchored in a historical document the court decision in Webb v. US (1925), a 1935 map of East Harlem, FBN training materials from the 1950s, a personal letter from the Treasury Department in 1985 each of which opens onto Anslinger and his context. From the Pharmacopeia of 1820 to death of Sandra Bland in 2015, from the Pennsylvania Railroad to the last passenger pigeon, and with forays into gangster lives, CIA operatives, and popular detective stories, Chasin covers impressive ground. Assassin of Youth is as riotous and loose a history of drug laws as can be imagined and yet it culminates in an arresting and precise revision of the emergence of drug prohibition. Today, even as marijuana is slowly being legalized, we still have not fully reckoned with the racist and xenophobic foundations of our cultural appetite for the severe punishment of drug offenders. In Assassin of Youth, Chasin shows us the deep, twisted roots of both our love and our hatred for drug prohibition.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52335298117905,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52335298806033,"sku":"CIN022627697XVG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780226276977.jpg?v=1758159594"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/en-gb\/collections\/author-books-by-alexandra-chasin.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}