“Five Books” is a website with an interesting premise: find someone who works on a given topic and ask him or her to name five books to read on that topic, and then discuss them.

When I was asked to name five books on drugs, I quickly agreed. But it turned out to be a harder assignment than it seems. Vigorous efforts to persuade Anna Blundy, who runs the site and does the interviewing, that five equals ten - for sufficiently large values of five - were unavailing.So I wound up leaving out more great books than I could include, and the final selections reflected considerations of topical balance as much as quality.

Here’s the list of five:

Philip J. Cook, Paying the Tab: The Costs and Benefits of Alcohol Control

David Boyum and Peter Reuter, An Analytic Assessment of US Drug Policy

Maia Szalavitz, Help at Any Cost

Gene Heyman, Addiction: A Disorder of Choice

Huston Smith, Cleansing the Doors of Perception

That meant leaving out:

Jonathan Caulkins, Susan Everingham, Peter Rydell, and James Chiesa, An Ounce of Prevention, A Pound of Uncertainty

David Courwright, Dark Paradise and Forces of Habit

John Kaplan, The Hardest Drug

Rob MacCoun and Peter Reuter, Drug War Heresies: Learning from Other Times, Places and Vices

Don Perrine, The Chemistry of Mind-Altering Drugs

Robin Room, Benedikt Fischer, Wayne Hall, Simon Lenton and Peter Reuter, Cannabis Policy: Moving Beyond Stalemate

Andrew Weil and Winifred Rosen, Chocolate to Morphine

And yes, all of this will be on the exam.