Johann Hari's Top Book Recommendations

Want to know what books Johann Hari recommends? We've researched interviews, social media posts, podcasts, and articles to build a comprehensive list of Johann Hari's favorite book recommendations of all time. At Shortform, we know books. Our book guides are the best in the world. Learn why.

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Drug Addicts Are Human Beings: The Story of Our Billion-Dollar Drug Racket, How We Created It and How We Can Wipe It Out

Henry Smith williams

5.0

Recommended by Johann Hari.

Johann Hari

Who wants the drug war? Who wins from it? Who benefits from it? It’s armed criminal gangs. For everyone else, it’s a disaster. [source]

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The Murderers: The Shocking Story of the Narcotic Gangs

Harry J. Anslinger

4.2

Recommended by Johann Hari.

Johann Hari

Anslinger loved the true crime genre and these books are written as sexy, thrilling, captivating stories of their time. [source]

Murder City: Ciudad Juarez and the Global Economy's New Killing Fields

Charles Bowden

3.9

Ciudad Juarez lies just across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas. A once-thriving border town, it now resembles a failed state. Infamously known as the place where women disappear, its murder rate exceeds that of Baghdad.

In Murder City, Charles Bowden-one of the few journalists who spent extended periods of time in Juarez-has written an extraordinary account of what happens when a city disintegra

Recommended by Johann Hari.

Johann Hari

It’s a study of Ciudad Juarez, a city in northern Mexico, on the border with the United States. At the time Charles Bowden was there, it was the deadliest city in the world. [source]

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The Globalization of Addiction: A Study in Poverty of the Spirit

Bruce Alexander

4.4

'The Globalization of Addiction' presents a radical rethink about the nature of addiction. Scientific medicine has failed when it comes to addiction. There are no reliable methods to cure it, prevent it, or take the pain out of it. There is no durable consensus on what addiction is, what causes it, or what should be done about it. Meanwhile, it continues to increase around the world. This book arg

Recommended by Johann Hari.

Johann Hari

What Bruce shows is that both the right-wing and left-wing theories of addiction are wrong. [source]

In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction

Gabor Maté

4.6

Based on Gabor Maté’s two decades of experience as a medical doctor and his groundbreaking work with the severely addicted on Vancouver’s skid row, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts radically reenvisions this much misunderstood field by taking a holistic approach. Dr. Maté presents addiction not as a discrete phenomenon confined to an unfortunate or weak-willed few, but as a continuum that runs throug

Recommended by Johann Hari.

Johann Hari

If you wanted to design a system that would make addiction worse, you’d design the system we have now. [source]