“A fascinating history of the use and abuse of amphetamines, full of hair-raising detail… Add a dash of theorizing about the medicalization of social problems, and you have a book that is, well, addictive."
- New York Observer
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"Brilliant"
- The Guardian (UK) "Perceptive" - Washington Post
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"This is a superb book."
- David Courtwright, Journal of American History
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"[A] lively yet insightfully critical text whose pages turn quickly even without benefit of the drug in question."
- A. Daemmrich, American Historical Review
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“On Speed is as attention grabbing as any contemporary thriller: greed, politics, drugs and addiction fill the pages of Nicolas Rasmussen’s historical account of the rise of amphetamine use in the United States and Britain... Rasmussen writes with a confident voice and meticulous attention to detail… fascinating and timely.”
- M. Gnegy, Nature Medicine
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"Enormously interesting.... On Speed makes an invaluable contribution to our understanding of amphetamine’s history. More important, it is a thought provoking account of the pharmaceutical industry’s influence on psychiatric medicine."
- R. Mcketin, Addiction
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"This book... should be close to compulsory reading within mental health circles"
- D. Healy, Journal of Attention Disorders
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"Rasmussen is to be congratulated for excavating this hidden history... This is a work of impressive scholarship."
- I.D. Smith, British Journal of Psychiatry
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"On Speed is a fascinating and thoroughly researched 'biography' of a class of drugs for which markets had to be created. The history of amphetamines over the past 70 years shows the iron fisted grasp the drug industry has had and continues to have over medicine"
“On Speed is a fascinating book for students of drug policy and drug use in the broader social, economic, and political context of the West, and the United States in particular. It is most helpful in aiding one to think clearly and broadly about how patterns of drug use emerge, the institutional factors behind them, and the way we respond to them. And it is a clarion call for reform of the US pharmaceutical industry, as well as a riveting social history of speed."
