Can't Find My Way Home by Martin Torgoff

Can't Find My Way Home by Martin Torgoff

This is the story of how America got high, told from a personal point of view by someone who took part in many of the events that he reports in this book. Martin Torgoff has spent ten years interviewing and researching this book, and many of the people with whom he spoke are no longer alive (Ginsberg, Burroughs, Leary, etc). His intention was to write a history that could be the basis of meaningful dialogue about how society should regulate drugs. He doesn't romanticise or demonise drug use, but neither does he accept hopelessly glib slogans such as 'Just say no'. With roughly one-third of the population having used illegal drugs, it is clear that many Americans don't just say no. But discussion of drug policy is confined to a small section at the end of the book. This is a history, told mainly through the words of participants. The book covers the major drugs of the century: heroin, cocaine, marijuana, Ecstasy, and amphetamines. It begins with the jazz musicians of the 1940's, through the Beat Generation of the fifties, the flower-power of the sixties, the wake-up call in the seventies to the designer drugs of the eighties and nineties. Through this history of drugs Martin Torgoff presents a facsinating social history of America over the last sixty years and shows how the use (and misuse) of drugs have shaped a nation.

"As pleasantly and richly intoxicating as a double hit of Humboldt County, California's finest...Torgoff ranges widely in documenting the profound influence of drugs on postwar America."
-- Nick Gillespie, The Washington Post Book World
"Sprawling, high-spirited....[Torgoff's] ambitious chronicle packs considerable punch as an antidote to official policies based on 'myths, fears, exaggerations, and lies.'"
-- Martin A. Lee, Los Angeles Times
"An exuberant chronicle of ecstatic inebriation, delusional utopianism, wretched excess and chastened nostalgia for lost highs."
-- The New York Times Book Review

Martin Torgoff has been a contributing editor at Interview and a producer for CNN "World Beat." He is a documentary filmmaker and the author of several books, including the bestselling Elvis: We Love You Tender and American Fool: The Roots and Improbable Rise of John Cougar Mellencamp, which won an ASCAP Deems Taylor award. He lives in New York City with his wife and son.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780743230117
ISBN 10	0743230116
Title	Can't Find My Way Home
Author	Martin Torgoff
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Simon & Schuster
Year published	2005-09-19
Number of pages	560
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable