Howard Merkel

Howard Markel and Amanda Smith discuss the evolution of the term “addiction.” Howard Markel's An Anatomy of Addiction: Sigmund Freud, William Halsted, and the Miracle Drug Cocaine traces the story of two Sigmund Freud and William Halsted, a New York surgeon. The book analyzes their powerful addiction to cocaine and how they ultimately changed the world in spite of it—or because of it. One became the father of psychoanalysis; the other of modern surgery. Amanda Smith is the author of Newspaper Titan: The Infamous Life and Monumental Times of Cissy Patterson, which touches upon the drinking life of Patterson's daughter Felicia, who, in 1943, was one of the first women to enter Alcoholics Anonymous.