A cowboy hero, lost in the modern world of the 1950s, turns outlaw and escapes a massive, high-tech posse only to be flattened by a tractor trailer hauling toilets, emblazoned with the nihilistic slogan “America Builds For . . .”

Horowitz and Wakefield trace the diagnosis of depression, and its distinction from sadness, back as far as Hippocrates, through Robert Burton, and on to the modern day.

On June 17, 1971, four days after the New York Times began publishing the Pentagon Papers, Richard Nixon declared that “America’s Public Enemy No. 1 in the United States is drug abuse,” inaugurating the War on Drugs.