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Ceremonial chemistry: the ritual persecution of drugs, addicts, and pushers

Szasz, Thomas
Responding to the controversy surrounding drug use and drug criminalization, Thomas Szasz suggests that the "therapeutic state" has overstepped its bounds in labeling certain drugs as "dangerous" substances and incarcerating drug "addicts" in order to cure them. Szasz shows that such policies scapegoat certain drugs as well as the persons who sell, buy, or use them; and 'misleadingly pathologize the "drug problem" by defining disapproved drug use as "disease" and efforts to change the behavior as "treatment." Readers will find in Szasz's arguments a cogent and committed response to a worldwide debate.
Syracuse University Press 2003-10-01 290 pages

The therapeutic state: psychiatry in the mirror of current events

Szasz, Thomas
Thomas Szasz has been challenging the very existence of "mental illness" for over twenty-five years. His advocacy of freedom of choice and the abolition of involuntary psychiatry has made him America's most controversial psychiatrist. The Therapeutic State is a unique collection of topical essays about what the author calls "one of the grandest illusions of our age, mental illness, and the quixotic crusade against it." Pivoting his analysis on news-making events, Szasz exposes the fallacies of our present penchant for interpreting the behavior of "sane" persons as goal-directed and therefore sensible, and the behavior of "insane" persons as caused by a "mental illness" and therefore senseless. In a series of diverse short pieces, originally published in newspapers and magazines, the author shows us that individual liberty and responsibility are indivisible, and that we cannot protect ourselves against coercive psychiatry's threats to liberty so long as we persist in using psychiatric ideas and interventions to evade responsibility. Szasz's recommendation is simple but radical: So-called mental patients should be treated like other people - as no more subject to loss of liberty or entitled to excuses from responsibility than anyone else. Psychiatrists should be treated like other professionals - having no more power to inculpate innocent persons or to expurgate guilty ones than, say, accountants or architects. In short, our aim should be to disarm psychiatrists, much as the Founding Fathers disarmed priests. Nothing less can free us from the "benefits" and "harms" of the Therapeutic State.
Prometheus Books 1984-03-01 360 pages

Beyond frozen conflict: scenarios for the separatist disputes of Eastern Europe

Waal, Thomas de,Twickel, Nikolaus von
The five unresolved separatist conflicts of the post-Soviet space in Eastern Europe are the biggest risk to Europe?s stability and security. Four of these - Abkhazia, South Ossetia in Georgia, Transnistria in Moldova, and Nagorny Karabakh contested between Armenia and Azerbaijan - date back to around the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991-2, and became called ?frozen conflicts?. The fifth is Ukraine?s Donbas, which in 2014 saw large parts of its Donetsk and Luhansk regions violently separate from Kyiv at a cost of 13,000 human lives so far, due crucially to Russia?s supporting hybrid warfare there. This book is the first to give an up-to-date account of all five conflicts in an analytically consistent manner. It charts new territory in exploring systematically a full range of scenarios for the possible future of all five conflicts and offers a basis of sound information for officials, diplomats, scholars and the general public
Centre for European Policy Studies 2020-10-16 228 pages

Superhero: a novel

Nelson, Tim Blake
""A uniquely nuanced and engaging perspective on the oddness of Hollywood...Superhero goes inside baseball in all the best ways: unbiased, at times ridiculous, and wonderfully, uncomfortably accurate. It begs to be read because it is so damned good." -Amanda Seyfried A-list actor Peter Compton and producing partner Marci Levy exist in the rarefied air of Hollywood's elite. Their status as a married power couple is unmatched, their presence in any room transformative and god-like. But as their private jet lands in Atlanta to begin production on a tentpole superhero movie, even their privileged position will come under threat by the massive pressures of such an undertaking. Compton, a self-educated recovering addict, sees the role of Sparta comics superhero Major Machina as the opportunity to transcend his already stratospheric platform. As director Joel Slavkin, Oscar-winning DP Javier Benavidez, and a crew of hundreds arrive in Atlanta to begin shooting, it doesn't take long for the production to be embroiled in the tension and egos that drive the film. But when video of Peter's disastrous on-set behavior goes viral, Peter and Marci's partnership will be challenged as it never has before. As the stakes grow ever higher, it may just take a superhero to save them. With his signature wit and razor sharp dialog, Tim Blake Nelson invites the reader to walk alongside him as he enters the closely-guarded world of industrial strength cinema"--
Unnamed Press 2025-12-02 409 pages

Tina Barney: family ties

Barney, Tina
"Family ties collects sixty large-format portraits from the beginning of Tina Barney's career to now. The book includes an essay by Quentin Bajac, as well as an interview with the artist by Sarah Meister, and James Welling. These texts convey the artist's approach to large-format photography, her ongoing interest in the rituals of families, and her personal ideas of composition, color, and the relationship between photography and painting"--
Aperture 2024 171 pages

Little Green A Novel

Tish Cohen
How much pressure can a marriage take? Elise Sorenson has been striving for the Olympics as long as she can remember. The months of intense training and competition in the horse show world take her away, far too often, from her husband, Matt, and their eight-year-old daughter, Gracie. Matt, a lawyer still vying to make partner at fifty, has made huge sacrifices in his career to be Gracie’s primary caregiver. This was the deal Elise and Matt struck, but it’s no longer working. Their finances and their relationship are strained to the point of snapping, and they’re forced to sell the lakeside cabin that has been in Matt’s family for generations to pay for yet another year of dressage and school fees and the physiotherapy Gracie needs for her disability. When the Sorensons arrive in Lake Placid to prepare the cabin for sale, Matt is taken aback by the frosty reception from locals who’ve always revered his family. What could have possibly changed? But all their worldly problems fade when the unthinkable happens to their daughter. In the panic and confusion that follow, the fault lines in Elise and Matt’s marriage crack wide open, allowing long-held resentments and blame to come bursting to the surface . . . In Tish Cohen’s riveting new novel, she explores how our truest selves are revealed in our very darkest moments.
HarperCollins 2018-06-12 352 pages

The Invisible Rules of the Zoë Lama

Tish Cohen
If you are one of ZoAas friends, you know her ainvisible rulesa for school survival, from what to wear to which boy is the Most Vile. Ever since the day ZoA neutralized the playground bully, she has been the go-to gal for classmates and teachers alike. When a new girl comes to school with a areputation, a ZoA decides to help her fit in. But who will save ZoA when her coaching backfires completely?
HarperCollins 2016-01-15 256 pages

The Search Angel

Tish Cohen
As the owner of the upscale children's boutique Pretty Baby, Eleanor Sweet is surrounded by gleaming strollers, organic cotton onesies and round-bellied expectant mothers. It's a serene atmosphere of new beginnings but for the sounds of punk and funk coming from the graffiti-splattered new record shop next door and Eleanor's fierce desire for a baby of her own. Her wish for a child is finally granted in the form of Lily, an abandoned baby en route from Korea. But Eleanor's husband unexpectedly backs out, and the adoption is at risk. Orphaned as a young woman herself and determined to give Lily the family she deserves, Eleanor hires Isabelle, a search angel, to find her own birth mother. What Eleanor discovers about love and family isn't what she expects but gives a new understanding of what it means to be a mother. Praise for The Search Angel "In The Search Angel, Tish Cohen explores how the things one desires most are often linked inextricably to our pasts. Eleanor Sweet's pursuit of adoption and the search for her own birth parents is told with compassion, humour, and intelligence--all the ingredients you look for in the best of books." - Catherine McKenzie, author of Hidden "The Search Angel is not only beautifully written and populated with achingly real characters, it also strikes a delicate balance between incisive humour and the sadness and joy that are the inevitable by-product of love." - Susan Juby, author of The Woefield Poultry Collective "The Search Angel is a page-turner. I could not put it down, and those are the only clich's you will read with regards to this book. Eleanor, an adoptee in the process of getting her own child, a feisty "search angel" who helps find Eleanor find her birth mother and a depressed Great Dane are just some of the rich characters that you will be glad you invited into your home. A funny, sad, touching and original story that shouldn't be missed. Why are you wasting time reading this blurb? Read The Search Angel. You'll be glad you did." - Colin Mochrie, actor and comedian "Move over Jodi Picoult"--The Globe and Mail.
HarperCollins 2014-06-03 328 pages

Skin

Hill, Tobias
In an isolated trailer home in the far north of Japan, an old criminal scrutinizes his tattooed skin while he waits for the past to catch up with him. A year later, the life of a young policeman breaks down as he investigates a tattooed corpse and the history of death and guilt embedded in its skin. From the Japanese underworld to midnight in the London Zoo aquarium, Skin charts the lives of people in a world made stark and fantastical. The grief of a young computer programmer who cannot erase the ghostly memories of his twins. The vicious logic of the games played by children while their parents sip drinks under parasols. And London Zoo, where the disappearance of dead animals is blamed on the 'Featherman', an eerie bodysnatcher who passes through London's wastelands and derelict spaces, leaving no trace for the feathers of green humming-birds.
Bloomsbury 2015-01-29 200 pages