Reviews - The Urge: Our History of Addiction

179 reviews for:

The Urge: Our History of Addiction

I think the book title is a bit misleading. “Our history of addiction” does not clarify what it means by the word 'our'. Mistakenly I thought it was going to be a rather general look at addiction throughout history and across a variety of cultures, and there is some of that, but mostly it is US. There is a little bit of Britain and some China and a little mention of some ancient texts but 95% of it is contemporary white dude addiction problems.

So while it is informative in some aspects, I don't think it is a must read.

kbrown5455's review

4.0

Very interesting treatment of the history of addiction, with the parallel story of the author’s struggle with alcohol use disorder. He is a psychiatrist, so brings a professional and personal angle to this book

johnkoi's review

4.5

hopeful informative inspiring medium-paced

gk1412's review

4.0

challenging emotional hopeful informative reflective sad medium-paced

dropkickmechanics's review against another edition

4.0

dark emotional informative medium-paced

nicoleegg's review against another edition

3.5

dark informative reflective slow-paced

Enjoyed the mix of history, science, and personal memoir. The memoir and self-reflection sections were absolutely my favorite, and I wish there was more of them. The history was interesting and very thoroughly researched, but was a little bit boring for me at times.