Books › Chasing the Scream
Chasing the Scream
432 pages
An urgent, globe-trotting investigation that dismantles everything you thought you knew about addiction and the war on drugs.
What it feels like
Reading this book feels like having a blindfold suddenly removed. It is a propulsive, globe-trotting investigation that reads with the urgency of a thriller, yet is anchored by a profound heart of radical empathy. The narrative sweeps you from early twentieth-century jazz clubs to modern cartels, immersing you in the harrowing, deeply personal stories of those caught in the crossfire of a century-long policy failure. The prose is accessible and impassioned, seamlessly weaving historical research with intimate character portraits. While the atmosphere is often sobering and steeped in systemic tragedy, the emotional journey ultimately arcs toward a fierce, illuminating hope. It will captivate readers who love paradigm-shifting nonfiction that challenges entrenched societal myths and leaves them looking at the world with entirely new eyes.
- Mood
- harrowing
- eye-opening
- sobering
- hopeful
- Tone
- urgent
- empathetic
- impassioned
- investigative
- persuasive
- Pace
- propulsive
- Themes
- systemic injustice · root causes of addiction · radical empathy · human connection vs isolation · unintended consequences
- The writing
- Narrative-driven and highly accessible, blending rigorous journalistic inquiry with the gripping pacing of a thriller.
- The arc
- Begins in the harrowing depths of systemic cruelty and personal tragedy, steadily building toward a profound, hopeful revelation about the power of human connection.
- Who it's for
- Readers who crave paradigm-shifting narrative nonfiction that uses deeply personal stories to dismantle entrenched social myths.
Content notes
- drug addiction
- overdose
- systemic violence
- racism
- murder
- trauma
About the book
January, 2015 will mark a century of the war on drugs in the United States: one hundred years since the first arrests under the Harrison Act. Facing down this anniversary, Johann Hari was witnessing a close relative and an ex-boyfriend bottoming out on cocaine and heroin. But what was the big picture in the war on drugs? Why does it continue, when most people now think it has failed? The reporter set out on a two-year, 20,000-mile journey through the theater of this war--to find out how it began, how it has affected people around the world, and how we can move beyond it. Chasing the Scream is fueled by dramatic personal stories of the people he meets along the way: A transsexual crack dealer in Brooklyn who wanted to know who killed her mother, and a mother in Mexico who spent years tracking her daughter's murderer across the desert. A child smuggled out of the Jewish ghetto during the Holocaust who helped unlock the scientific secrets of addiction. A doctor who pushed the decriminalization in Portugal of all drugs--from cannabis to crack. Powerful, propulsive, and persuasive, Chasing the Scream is the page-turning story of a century-long mistake, which shows us the way to a more humane future.
Description from Open Library.
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