Overview

Testosterone has inspired dreams-of restored youth, recharged sexual appetites, faster running, quicker thinking, bigger muscles-since it was first synthesized in 1935. This provocative book investigates the complex, bizarre, and sometimes outrageous history of synthetic testosterone and other male hormone therapies. Exploring many little-known social arenas-both inside and outside the medical world-in which these substances are becoming increasingly available and accepted, Testosterone Dreams examines the implications and dangers of their use in professional sports, in the workplace, in our sex lives, and beyond. Testosterone Dreams tells the story of testosterone's growing and sometimes concealed influence in our culture over the past 70 years. It explores such controversial topics as the invention and marketing of the male menopause, the disturbing history of hormonal and other medical treatments aimed at boosting or suppressing women's sexuality, and hormone doping in sporting events such as the Tour de France and the Olympics, and in Major League Baseball. It brings to light the hidden use of hormone doping by policemen, soldiers, and other workers in a variety of jobs. It also discusses the burgeoning steroid use in the gay community and its relation to AIDS, and takes a hard look at the pharmaceutical industry's promotional campaigns to create new markets for testosterone products. Testosterone Dreams is the first book to bring together the whole story of testosterone and to consider its social and ethical implications: Where does therapy end and performance enhancement begin? How are changing medical technologies affecting how we think about our identities as men and women and the elusive goal of ""well-being""? This book will be essential reading as we move inexorably toward the wide-open, libertarian pharmacology that is now making these drug regimes available to a wider and wider clientele.

Full Product Details

9780520248229

Table of Contents

Reviews

[Into] the incredible story of male hormone therapies.... Hoberman injects his dense social history with odd medical lore, dissections of corporate profiteering, sharp examinations of Olympic doping and a powder-dry disdain for consumers who demand a better life in pill form. He connects such seemingly disjointed topics as Arnold Schwarzenegger's popularity and cops who abuse steroids. And he doesn't shrink from big questions such as, what does it mean to be human in an age when steroids can make you a stronger athlete, Prozac a more focused businessman and Viagra a better lover? - Playboy Magazine Hoberman's excellent [book] tells much of the story of how and why steroids came to the pharmacy shelves. - New Yorker New York Yankee Jason Giambi has admitted to a grand jury that he injected himself with testosterone, as part of his steroid cocktail. Perhaps Giambi should read John Hoberman's Testosterone Dreams: Rejuvenation, Aphrodisia, Doping, which investigates the complex, bizarre and sometimes outrageous history of synthetic testosterone and other male hormone therapies. - Publishers Weekly

Author Information

John Hoberman is the author of Darwin's Athletes: How Sport Has Damaged Black America and Preserved the Myth of Race (1997), Mortal Engines: The Science of Performance and the Dehumanization of Sport (1992), The Olympic Crisis: Sport, Politics, and the Moral Order (1986), and Sport and Political Ideology (1984).

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