The Age of Anxiety

The definitive history of America's tranquilizer culture--from the Miltown sensation in the 1950s to Valium in the 1960s and 1970s to Xanax in the twenty-first century.

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Drugs for anxiety are a billion-dollar business in the United States. Yet in 1955, when the prescription tranquilizer Miltown became available, pharmaceutical executives worried that there was no market. In The Age of Anxiety , historian Andrea Tone provides a comprehensive account of the rise of America's prescription drug culture through the lens of our complicated relationship with tranquilizers.