Contributors

Operating out of Morristown, New Jersey, psychologist and lawyer Stanton Peele is a one-man commando unit whose uniform is a signature Hawaiian shirt. His target is the drug and alcohol treatment establishment, and he lobs his latest grenade in "Hungry for the Next Fix" (page 32). Peele, co-author of Resisting 12-Step Coercion (See Sharp Press), specializes in assailing the "mock medicalism and mock moralism" of those who preach that only abstinence can beat alcoholism. Between battles, Peele doles out gentle advice about addiction to readers of his Web site, www.peele.net.

"I find Dr. Laura endlessly fascinating," admits Ana Marie Cox, who analyzes a new book by the dour grand madam of radio therapy in "I'm OK, You Suck" (page 53). Cox has never phoned Dr. Laura for wisdom, preferring instead to learn by living. A former editor at Suck, Mother Jones, and The Chronicle of Higher Education, Cox was recently hired—and fired—as a senior editor at the liberal monthly The American Prospect. The therapeutic lesson she takes away from the experience: "That's the last time I want to be brought on a publication to make it younger and more hip. It's a recipe for total disaster." At home in Washington, D.C., she's now either freelancing or unemployed, depending on her mood.

Living in Washington state and attending college in Canada, Jeremy Lott spends more time than most Americans crossing the border into the Great White North. Last fall, the trip took up to three hours a visit. Yet in "Maple Leaf Rag," he argues counterintuitively that the ultimate effect of 9/11 on the border will be to bring it down (page 61). Lott, a former editor of the Web magazines Spintech and The American Partisan, says it was proximity and price that drew him to British Columbia's Trinity Western University, where he's a senior studying religion. Life in Canada has other perks, he notes: "You can still smoke in the malls."