New York Times Book Review
Macy…has moved on to an even more impenetrable question: How the hell do we extract ourselves from this quicksand?…She grills drug policy scholars and former drug czars alike.”
author of No Visible Bruises Rachel Louise Snyder
If Dopesick illuminated the hidden world of opioid addiction, Raising Lazarus puts it under a microscope, showing us what we can do socially, politically, and personally to curb it. It is a book of profound human connection, filled with stories of those determined to save their communities no matter the cost. Macy refuses to let us look away from this urgent, Sisyphean task. Raising Lazarus is humbling, dazzling and infused with hope. Beth Macy is, quite literally, a life saver.
New York Times bestselling author of Wildland Evan Osnos
Raising Lazarus confirms Beth Macy’s status as America's nonfiction laureate of the opioid crisis. This book is a force of inspiration that will make you believe not in miracles but in work – the sheer innovative, determined, empathic work of ordinary Americans. They are shifting the rightful place of shame from drug users to drugmakers.
New York Times praise for Factory Man—Bryan Burrough
Nonfiction storytelling at its finest.... It does what the best business books should: It delivers a heavily researched, highly entertaining story, at the end of which you realize you've learned something.... This is a great American story, the kind that we don't read often enough.
Esquire
Enlightening and exhaustive, it’s at once a damning exposé about greed and a moving paean to the power of community activism.”
USA Today praise for Dopesick —Matt McCarthy
You've probably heard pieces of this story before, but in Dopesick we get something original: a page-turning explanation.
New York Times bestselling authors of Deaths of De Anne Case and Angus Deaton
Beth Macy is America’s indispensable guide to the opioid epidemic. She brings great humanity and unparalleled storytelling to her work. Through her, the horrors of opioids are better known but, as this update makes clear, the suffering goes on. We owe her a great debt.
From the Publisher
When the Covid epidemic seized the headlines, America's overdose epidemic did not go away; in fact, it intensified. Beth Macy is one of the great chroniclers of how we got here and where we are headed. RAISING LAZARUS is a necessary companion to the urgent story she told in DOPESICK, a deeply reported, deeply moving, boots on the ground picture of what the crisis of addiction is doing to our country, and of the activists and ordinary people who are working to fight it. In that respect, this is a surprisingly hopeful book, the tale of a catastrophic crisis, but also of profound compassion and the resilience of the human spirit.”
—Patrick Radden Keefe, bestselling author of Empire of Pain
author of Heavy Kiese Laymon
As if we needed one more reminder of Beth Macy's phenomenal narrative journalism, RAISING LAZARUS takes us to the front lines of the fight for the nation's health. Macy finds unfamiliar heroes in places most of us would lack the will or imagination to explore. It is Macy's commitment to defamiliarizing the opioid epidemic that has, strangely and thankfully, helped so many Americans understand that none of our families are alone in this brutally pervasive fight for our lives.
New York Times praise for Dopesick—Jennifer Szalai
Macy has waded into a public health morass that has also become a political minefield...Macy's strengths as a reporter are on full display when she talks to people, gaining the trust of chastened users, grieving families, exhausted medical workers and even a convicted heroin dealer, whose scheduled two-hour interview with the author ended up stretching to more than six hours.
praise for Dopesick—The Boston Globe
An impressive feat of journalism, monumental in scope and urgent in its implications...gritty and heartbreaking.
author of The Urge: Our History of Addiction Carl Erik Fisher
“This essential book is a beautifully crafted work of nonfiction literature, propelled by fierce compassion and a yearning for justice. Beth Macy has an extraordinary gift for encapsulating our nation’s greatest challenges in gripping, intimate, and wise stories of everyday American struggles. RAISING LAZARUS is at once an unblinking and masterful diagnosis of the root causes of our historic overdose crisis and an inspiring and hopeful call to action. Not to be missed.
Washington Post
"A portrait of the compassionate and practical people who have stepped in to help stem the tens of thousands of drug deaths that still destroy families every year.”
author of Nomadland: Surviving America in the Jessica Bruder
Beth Macy has done it again. Her clear-sighted, deeply humane reporting takes readers to the front lines of the opioid crisis, where a grassroots network of brave activists work to defy stigma, save lives and hold power to account in the long shadow of the Sackler dynasty. This is potent, essential storytelling and a much-needed reminder of our common humanity that points, ultimately, towards hope.
praise for Dopesick —New York Times Book Review
A harrowing, deeply compassionate dispatch from the heart of a national emergency...a masterwork of narrative journalism, interlacing stories of communities in crisis with dark histories of corporate greed and regulatory indifference.
New York Times praise for Dopesick—Janet Maslin
This book is comprehensive, compassionate and forceful. No matter what you already know about the opioid crisis, Dopesick's toughness and intimacy make it a must.
Editor’s Choice praise for Dopesick —New York Times Book Review
Macy's harrowing account of the opioid epidemic in which hundreds of thousands have already died masterfully interlaces stories of communities in crisis with dark histories of corporate greed and regulatory indifference.
New York Times bestselling author of Heartland Sarah Smarsh
Macy brings her empathetic reporter's craft to the oft-ignored problem solvers on the ground—-those who, as Macy writes, didn't wait around for justice. Macy didn't either. Unlike so many laws, court decisions, and news stories, Raising Lazarus does right by the victims of the opioid crisis
AudioFile
Narrated with conviction…Macy’s performance hits every note…Where this audiobook succeeds most is in Macy’s passionate portrayals of the ordinary people who are seeking justice for themselves and for future generations…Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award.”
New York Times praise for Factory Man—Janet Maslin
In a class with other runaway debuts like Laura Hillenbrand's "Seabiscuit" and Katherine Boo's "Behind the Beautiful Forevers": These nonfiction narratives are more stirring and dramatic than most novels. And Ms. Macy writes so vigorously that she hooks you instantly. You won't be putting this book down.
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2022-04-26
Macy follows her consequential book Dopesick with another account of big pharma’s role in killing Americans and of the frontline workers who are trying to save them.
“They say we’re going to lose a generation if we don’t do something. I say we’ve already lost that generation.” So noted a West Virginian while recounting that nearly everyone in her town has been affected by the opioid crisis. Macy hits the small towns of Appalachia and the archives to deliver another damning indictment of the Sackler family, who “willfully created the opioid crisis…a murderous rampage that has victimized hundreds of thousands of people in this country.” Via their company Purdue Pharma, the Sacklers unleashed a flood of OxyContin on the market, bribed doctors to overprescribe it, and then relied on the stigma and shame attached to addiction to ward off lawsuits. When the lawsuits finally arrived, the Sacklers were prepared. “For a quarter century,” writes Macy, “the Sacklers masterminded and micromanaged a relentless marketing campaign for their killer drug, then surgically drained the company of $10 billion when they saw trouble on the horizon.” The Sacklers have since been shamed and stigmatized, their name removed from museum halls and university buildings, but they have been able to keep their money—so far, anyway. Meanwhile, in what Macy calls the “Uneven States of America,” the drug crisis continues to grow, with future substance-dependent people beginning their drug journeys, not ending them, with heroin and fentanyl. Against this epidemic stand health workers, legal reformers, and pioneering judges who have established drug courts to dispense not punishment but treatment. Then there are the conservative politicians from, ironically, the red states most likely to be awash in a flood of drugs, who remain busy “amplifying NIMBYism” to oppose needle exchanges, free clinics, homeless shelters, and other social welfare vehicles for helping the afflicted.
A profoundly disconcerting book that, with luck, will inspire reform to aid the dopesick and punish their suppliers.
