Steroid Nation: Juiced Home Run Totals, Anti-aging Miracles, and a Hercules in Every High School: The Secret History of America's True Drug Addiction
by Shaun Assael
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Book Summary Information
Author: Shaun AssaelEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2007-10-23
ISBN: 1933060379
Number of pages: 368
Publisher: ESPN
Book Reviews of Steroid Nation: Juiced Home Run Totals, Anti-aging Miracles, and a Hercules in Every High School: The Secret History of America's True Drug Addiction
Book Review: Must Read For Sports Fans.
Summary: 5 Stars
Shaun Assael, in his book Steroid Nation*, does a great job of weaving the threads of the steroid story from its less than humble beginnings as part of the Venice Beach bodybuilding underground to the Tour de France scandal, use by NFL stars and Major League Baseball players and Olympic champions. Assael tells the story of how the Dan Duchaine, the original steroid guru, opened up Pandora's Box when he published the Underground Steroid Handbook for Men and Women in 1982, and set in motion events that were responsible for - among other things - the BALCO Labs performance-enhancing drug scandal, the drug related deaths of professional wrestlers and the creation of the multi-billion dollar dietary supplement industry.
Steroid Nation* is a crazy story of mad geniuses, smugglers, drug dealers, underground gurus, self-taught chemists, deviants, narcissists, human guinea pigs, cheaters and liars. For people who have had their head in the sand with regard the steroids in sports scandal, Steroid Nation* will grab them by the scruff of their collective necks and shake them into awareness. The uninitiated will be amazed that a sociopath like Dan Duchaine could have had an influence on everything from the explosion of the use of steroids and human growth hormone to the creation of the drugs that were at the heart of the BALCO Labs scandal.
The amazing thing about how performance-enhancing drugs have affected the world of recreational activities and sport, is that there is a coherent string running through the story that connects the pioneers of the movement 30 years ago - Duchaine and his contemporaries; people that nobody has really ever heard of - to some of the biggest names in sports and entertainment of the past 10 years. A business that was as underground and as seedy as any seedy underground business could ever be, affected and then turned into something public, high-tech and lucrative.
Steroids, human growth hormone, creatine, androstendione, legal and illegal supplements have all been developed and used by people looking to get an edge, make some money and build a following. Steroid Nation* tells the story of how underground chemists looking for the next hot drug and supplement developed substances of dubious efficacy and that made people fortunes, while creating problems for the anti-doping movement.
Steroid Nation* is a great book, a book that tells a lot of stories and a book that every sports fan should read. If you don't understand the fuss about steroids, this book will help put things into perspective. "The Juice" isn't something that just came onto the scene, and athletes haven't just started cheating over the past few years.
The current performance-enhancing drug scandal didn't start with Marion Jones, Ben Johnson, BALCO Labs or Barry Bonds. The scandal started 30 years ago and has been growing the whole time, bubbling to the surface every once in a while. Read Shaun Assael's book Steroid Nation* so that you can get up to speed and understand the story that's been going on since the 1970s and that will continue to unfold in new and crazy ways as time goes by.
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Summary of Steroid Nation: Juiced Home Run Totals, Anti-aging Miracles, and a Hercules in Every High School: The Secret History of America's True Drug Addiction
When science lets us fulfill our greatest desires, where do we stop? Should Barry Bonds?s startling achievements be listed in the record book with an asterisk because he has been accused of using steroids? Did performance-enhancing drugs play a role in Lance Armstrong?s seven Tour de France victories? And what does Arnold Schwarzenegger?s continued success say about the appeal of his steroid-fueled bodybuilding persona?In the tradition of And the Band Played On, award-winning journalist Shaun Assael looks at America?s complicated love affair with steroids and how it has grown into the country?s?and perhaps the world?s?most insidious drug addiction.Steroid Nation presents a chilling portrait of a nation enamored of artificially pumped-up success. Chronicling steroid use far beyond the headlines, it begins with the bodybuilders of Venice Beach in the 1970s and continues through to the NFL?s Raiders of the ?80s and ?90s and the baseball scandals of today. Assael also reveals the dramatic story of the godfather of the steroid movement: Dan Duchaine, who wrote The Original Underground Steroid Handbook in 1981.
Part detective story, part medical investigation, and part sociological examination, Steroid Nation is a groundbreaking work on the most compelling story in the sports world today.
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