Chemical Heroes

“In exploring projects fantastical and frightening in their forms of intervention and enhancement, Andrew Bickford offers important insights into not only the US military's efforts to fortify the bodies and minds of its service members but also what it means to go to war on a twenty-first-century global battlefield.” - Sarah Wagner, author of What Remains: Bringing America’s Missing Home from the Vietnam War

“Andrew Bickford presents a mind-blowing array of technological and pharmacological innovations that promise to deliver the next stage of human warriors while raising the possibility that many of these innovations may unleash new nightmares. Drawing out the themes of utopian promises and dystopian realities, Chemical Heroes makes a significant theoretical contribution to anthropology and critical studies of the military that should be broadly read, discussed, and taught by anthropologists, political scientists, sociologists, psychologists, and others working in peace and conflict studies.” - David H. Price, author of Cold War Anthropology: The CIA, the Pentagon, and the Growth of Dual Use Anthropology

“Chemical Heroes describes decades of efforts by the US military to go beyond armoring soldiers from external attack by remaking soldiers’ bodies in ways that let them remain in combat for ever-longer periods of time.... Chemical Heroes lets readers see into the military’s fantasy world.” - Richard Lachmann, Social Forces

"[Chemical Heroes] is a significant contribution to military studies in anthropology, sociology, and political science, supplemented with tables, diagrams, illustrations, and direct quotations from military documents and research." - G. B. Osborne, Choice

“Chemical Heroes breaks new ground by exploring military innovation as a site of anxious preemption and dead­ly play, highlighting its contradictions, tensions, and nervous state in the robust tradition of anthropological work on militarization and US empire. The book provides a set of tools that will be valuable to students and scholars alike.” - Jocelyn Lim Chua, Anthropological Quarterly

“Those interested in a detailed history of the development of military biomedical interventions will be quite pleased. . . . Scholars of peace and conflict studies, biomedicine, technology, and labor will be well served by Bickford’s detailed work.” - Jesse Wozniak, Contemporary Sociology

“Vivid accounts, along with the author’s lucid, unpretentious, and conversational style and wonderful photo illustrations, will make it appealing to undergraduate and graduate students alike. . . . [Chemical Heroes] will be required reading for anyone interested in the militarization of American life.” - Roberto J. González, Current Anthropology

“An anthropologist now and an enlisted man in the 1980s, Andrew Bickford provides probing cross-cultural and historical perspectives on the U.S. military’s effort to make soldiers survive combat through engineered and medicated body enhancements.” - Ann L. von Mehren, Journal of Military History

“Chemical Heroes is an important and deeply researched archive of information regarding the U.S. military’s vision for the future. . . . The book is simultaneously technical and readable and will contribute to critical military studies, science and technology studies, as well as the anthropology of the body.” - Christopher Webb, Medical Anthropology Quarterly

“Chemical Heroes follows the development of the US military’s efforts to biomedically enhance their soldiers in response to the prediction that the future of warfare is a pharmaceutical battlefield. . . . [Bickford] navigates through these discussions in an engaging manner and this book is a must-read to enlighten oneself of the current approaches and history of supersoldier making.”

"[A]n intriguing study that engages his audience . . . . Bickford’s work is exceptionally insightful, using historical references to show how far military science has come in maximizing the health, wellness, and safety of the soldier." - Megan R. Undeberg, H-Sci-Med-Tech, H-Net Reviews

"Chemical Heroes is an accessible, informative, and imaginative contribution to cultural anthropology, science and
technology studies, military medicine, and public health research. Bickford makes a unique methodological contribution to ethnographic research in anthropology, extending its application to concepts like discipline, state power, state fears, and military goals."
  - Traben Pleasant, American Ethnologist