Over the past twenty years historians and anthropologists have converged on the study of psychoactive substances—“drugs” in common parlance. This excellent book adds a definitive archive-based history of cocaine to this stream of work. Gootenberg offers a critical perspective on the place of cocaine in the Western imaginary and in the real political and economic world in which this stimulant was developed, commodified as a legal substance, demonized, and ultimately disseminated as an illegal “narcotic.” (He points out that cocaine is a non-addictive stimulant, not a narcotic like heroin.) Gootenberg offers ideas on why coca did not at first capture the same European enthusiasm as did other New World substances such as tobacco and cacao, let alone the excitement that met substances such as tea, coffee, or opium from other parts of the world. He discusses Alfredo Bignon's research in Peru that resulted in “a novel cost-saving kerosene precipitation method for production of cocaine from fresh coca leaf (as opposed to Niemann's original 1860 alkaloid hydrochloride from dried coca)” (p. 38). Although Niemann was the first to isolate cocaine from coca, Gootenberg credits Bignon's technique as the true launch of cocaine as an important late-nineteenth-century commodity.

As with tobacco, cocaine entered the European world initially as a medical commodity, in particular as an effective local anesthetic, and it was soon being produced by pharmaceutical firms in Germany and the United States “for widespread medical applications as well as patent medicines and other usage, including leakage to pleasure users” (58). Coincident with the adoption of cocaine came new uses for and products from coca: beverages, tonics, cordials, cigarettes, and medical tinctures, the most famous being Vin Mariani (an elixir combining coca and Bordeaux wine) and Coca-Cola (until it was “de-cocainized” and coca leaf extract was substituted after 1903).

Peru is the lens through which Gootenberg scrutinizes the development of cocaine, its commodification as a legal substance, the “escape” of coca plants to be grown in other parts of the world, the “drug war” the United States has waged for nearly a century, the rise of illegal production and distribution of cocaine post-World War Two, and the shift in narco-trafficking to other countries such as Chile, Cuba, and more recently, Colombia and Mexico. He uncovered rich archival material in Peruvian locations and conducted interviews in Huanuco, the probable origin place for Erythroxylon coca. Through this Peruvian perspective we learn much about particular important cocaine actors (e.g., Alfredo Bignon, Arnaldo Kitz, Augusto Durand, Hoshi Hajime) and a cast of involved characters including immigrants and merchants from Austria, Germany, Croatia, China, Japan, Great Britain, and the United States.

Gootenberg sees a special irony in the fact that, “In 1900 Americans were the world's largest, most avid consumers and boosters of both substances [coca and cocaine], by then seemingly domesticated all-American goods” (119), only to turn against them a decade later. This turnabout occurred during the run-up to passage of the Prohibition Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, so the tenor of the times was very much “anti” mind-altering substances. In Gootenberg's opinion the century-long “drug war” waged by the United States against cocaine has failed, and he refers to the endeavor as “missionary drug control” and a “crusade,” pursued with “absolutist zeal.” It has resulted in “huge unintended social consequences,” among them the rise of highly sophisticated organizations for the production and movement of illegal cocaine from South America to the United States, Europe, and beyond.

Gootenberg makes a strong case that racism, Cold War anti-communism, and untoward meddling in other countries’ affairs fueled the anti-cocainism relentlessly pursued by Harry J. Anslinger (Director of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Narcotics), J. Edgar Hoover, and Richard Nixon. This meticulously researched volume provides insight into the bullyboy tactics the United States has used toward other countries in its hemisphere, and into how drug interdiction has sometimes provided a convenient excuse for other political agendas. Upon digesting the material Gootenberg provides on the failure of the “war on drugs” and coca eradication programs to stem the flow of cocaine, one wonders about the wisdom of U.S. efforts to eradicate opium poppies in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Like coca plants, poppies may simply pop up in new fields, miles ahead of those who would stamp them out.

Drug plants are now global crops as well as commodities. Coca spread to many parts of the world during the twentieth century, just as tobacco, coffee, and tea have moved far beyond their places of origin. When a profitable market for drug substances exists, especially if they are illegal, odds are high that producers will develop hybrid forms that concentrate the desirable alkaloids. Gootenberg mentions this occurring with coca (315), just as it has with Cannabis since the 1960s (new strains having much higher THC levels).

Gootenberg's book is a model of how to examine a particular drug substance in a specific part of the world while placing that examination in the broadest context. I hope we will see more such work at the intersection of history and anthropology in years to come.