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BOOKS

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  • Helena Hansen, Jules Netherland, David Herzberg, Whiteout: How Racial Capitalism Changed the Color of America's Opioid Crises (University of California Press, 2023)

  • David Herzberg, White Market Drugs: Addictive Pharmaceuticals and American Drug Policy (University of Chicago Press, 2020)

  • David Herzberg, Happy Pills in America: From Miltown to Prozac (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009)

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EDITED VOLUMES

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  • Nils Kessel, Joseph Gabriel, and David Herzberg, eds., Dealing with Drugs: New Histories of Risk and Benefit (University of Rochester Press, 2026)

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BOOKS IN PROGRESS

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  • Keith Wailoo, David Herzberg, Helena Hansen, eds., Breaking the Habit: An Introduction to How We Talk, and Shouldn't Talk, about Addiction (ms. under review at University of Chicago Press)
  • David Herzberg, The Doctor Had Found Just What He Wanted: Addiction and Healthcare Workers in the 20th Century (researching)

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SELECTED ARTICLES AND CHAPTERS

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  • David Herzberg, "Fantasies of addiction and liberation: The Demerol moment, 1944," in Kessel, Gabriel, and Herzberg, eds., Dealing With Drugs: New Histories of Risk and Benefit (Rochester University Press, forthcoming 2026)

  • Anne Kveim Lie, Helena Hansen, David Herzberg, Alex Mold, Marie Jauffret-Roustide, Isa Dussauge, Samuel K. Roberts, Jeremy Greene, and Nancy Campbell, “The harms of constructing addiction as a chronic, relapsing brain disease,” American Journal of Public Health 112(52), Supp 2, 2022, S104-S108, link

  • “Early U.S. drug regimes and medical and drug cultures,” Oxford University Press Companion to Drug History (Paul Gootenberg, ed.), 2022.​

  • David Herzberg and Jeremy Greene, “Stuck in Traffic? Conflicting regimes of global pharmaceutical governance,” Diplomatic History 45(5), November 2021, 940-953, link.

  • Danielle Fine, David Herzberg, and Sarah Wakeman, “Societal Biases, Institutional Discrimination, and Trends in Opioid Use in the USA,” Journal of General Internal Medicine 36 (2021), 797-801, link.

  • David Herzberg, “Between the Free Market and the Drug War,” in David Farber, ed., The War on Drugs: A History: Fifty Years, a Trillion Dollars, and Thirty Million Arrests (New York University Press, 2021).

  • “From one extreme to the other? The political construction of opioid consensus in the U.S.’s long 20th century,” Les Cahiers Droit Sciences et Technologies: Le consensus en droit de la santé et en droit de l’environnement [special issue on “consensus in health and environment"], December 2021, 119-136.

  • Scott Podolsky, David Herzberg, and Jeremy Greene, “Preying on Prescribers (and Their Patients): Pharmaceutical Marketing, Iatrogenic Epidemics, and the Sackler Legacy,” New England Journal of Medicine, April 10, 2019, 1-3 link

  • David Herzberg, “Entitled to Addiction? Race and pharmaceuticals in America’s first drug war,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 91 (Fall 2017), 586-623- winner J. Worth Estes Prize 2018 link

  • Nancy D. Campbell and David Herzberhg, "Gender and Critical Drug Studies: An Introduction and an Invitation," Contemporary Drug Problems 44(4), November 16, 2017 and Social History of Alcohol and Drugs 31, 2017 link​​

 

SELECTED ARTICLES AND CHAPTERS, cont.

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  • David Herzberg, Honoria Guarino, Pedro Mateu-Gelabert, and Alex S. Bennett, "Recurring Epidemics of Pharmaceutical Drug Abuse in America: Time for an All-Drug Strategy," American Journal of Public Health, March 2016: 408-10 link

  • David Herzberg, "Pills" in Rethinking Therapeutic Culture, eds. Timothy Aubrey and Trysh Travis (University of Chicago Press, 2015)

  • David Herzberg, "Busted for Blockbusters: 'Scrip Mills' and Prescribing Power in the 1970s," in Jeremy Greene and Elizabeth Segal Watkins, eds., Prescribed: Writing, Filling, Using, and Abusing the Prescription in Modern America (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012).

  • David Herzberg, "Blockbusters and Controlled Substances: Miltown, Quaalude, and Consumer Demand for Drugs in Postwar America," Cambridge Studies in the History and Philosophy of the Biological Sciences 42(4), December 2011: 415-26, link.

  • Jeremy Greene and David Herzberg, "Hidden in Plain Sight: The Popular Promotion of Prescription Drugs in the 20th  Century," American Journal of Public Health (May 2010): 793-803- winner article of year AJPH 2011 link

  • David Herzberg, "'The Pill You Love Can Turn On You': Feminism, Tranquilizers, and the Valium Panic of the 1970s." American Quarterly (March 2006): 79-103.

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ARTICLES / BOOK CHAPTERS IN PROGRESS

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  • David Herzberg, "Habitue," in Wailoo, Herzberg, Hansen, eds., An Introduction to How We Talk, and Shouldn't Talk, about Addiction (in revision after peer review at University of Chicago Press)​

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SELECTED PUBLIC HISTORY

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  • "I am a drug historian. Trump is wrong about fentanyl in almost every way," New York Times (front cover of Sunday editorial section), November 15, 2025, link

  • “History rhymes with the psychedelic boom,” Bill of Health, blog of the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School, February 1, 2024, link

  • [with Helena Hansen and Jules Netherland], "Will the opioid crisis deliver its worst harms to Black and brown people?" The Nation, August 28, 2023, link

  • “The opioid crisis isn’t just the Sacklers’ fault—and making Purdue Pharma pay isn’t enough on its own to fix the pharmaceutical industry’s deeper problems,” The Conversation, July 26, 2021, link

  • Review of Sam Quinones, The Least of Us: True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth (Bloomsbury, 2021), Washington Post, November 26, 2021 link,

  • Review of Michael Pollan, This Is Your Brain on Plants (Penguin, 2021); Washington Post, July 23, 2021 link,

  • “The company that makes OxyContin could become a ‘public trust’—what would that mean?” The Conversation, December 4, 2019; reprinted in Salon, The National Interest, San Francisco Chronicle, Houston Chronicle, and other places, link.

  • Helena Hansen, Jules Netherland, and David Herzberg, “How race made the opioid crisis,” Boston Review, April 9, 2019, link.

  • David Herzberg and Matt Pembleton, “While government cracked down on illegal drugs, Big Pharma hooked millions on opioids: The racist roots of the opioid crisis,” Washington Post, October 30, 2017, link.

  • "Setting today's opioid epidemic in historical context," Process: A Blog for American History (OAH), March 27, 2017

  • “Drug war dissents: Robinson v. California,” Points: The Blog of the Alcohol and Drug History Society, June 7, 2016

  • “100 words on the Harrison Act at 100,” Points: The Blog of the Alcohol and Drug History Society, December 17, 2014

  • “Shadow Journals: The Story of Medical Advertising,” 3-part blog post for the New York Academy of Medicine, October 15, 17, 19, 2013

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