Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America by Beth Macy: Conversation Starters Dopesick by Beth Macy takes a look at the central point of the opioid crisis in the United States. Opioid addiction has been a struggle for Americans for over twenty years. Macy takes the reader through the history of the opioid addiction crisis. She tells the stories of Americans whose lives have been greatly affected by prescription painkillers....

Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father's good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. In a plot that never pauses for breath, relayed in his own unsparing voice, he braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing...

"Resettling Your Brain in the Age of Cheap Pleasures"-- "This book is about pleasure. It's also about pain. Most important, it's about how to find the delicate balance between the two, and why now more than ever finding balance is essential. We're living in a time of unprecedented access to high-reward, high-dopamine stimuli: drugs, food, news, gambling, shopping, gaming, texting, sexting, Facebooking, Instagramming, YouTubing, tweeting ... The increased...

"Growing up gifted and working-class poor in the foothills of the Ozarks, Monica and Darci became fast friends. The girls bonded over a shared love of reading and learning, even as they navigated the challenges of their tumultuous family lives and declining town -- broken marriages, alcohol abuse, and shuttered stores and factories. They pored over the giant map in their middle-school classroom, tracing their fingers over the world that awaited them,...

"Shannon, Wally, and John built their lives around their place of work. Shannon, a white single mother, became the first woman to run the factory's dangerous furnaces at the Rexnord manufacturing plant in Indianapolis and was proud of producing one of the world's top brands of steel bearings. Wally, a black man known for his initiative and kindness, was promoted to become chairman of efficiency, one of the most coveted posts on the factory floor,...

"Today, a minimum-wage earner can afford a one-bedroom apartment in only 28 out of 3,140 counties in America. The single worst place in the United States to look for affordable housing is Osceola County, Florida. Once the main approach to Disney World, where vacationers found lodging on their way to the Magic Kingdom, the fifteen-mile Route 192 corridor in Osceola has become a site of shocking contrasts. At one end, absentee investors snatch up foreclosed...

"A feral child finds a family. An old bottle washes up with a note inside. A boy's stuffed elephant flies out the car window. Over two decades, Lane DeGregory's stories of ordinary people struggling with love and loss, pain and perseverance, have earned her a Pulitzer Prize for feature writing and enhanced the Tampa Bay (formerly St. Petersburg) Times's reputation for publishing pioneering literary nonfiction. DeGregory has also built a worldwide...

For fans of Dopesick and Bad Blood, a gripping memoir by the prosecutor who put New York's most infamous "dirty doctor" behind bars in a landmark case in the country's fight against those who seek to profit from an epidemic of opioid addiction. Treating up to ninety patients a day, Dr. Stan Li, a pain management physician in New York City, racked up over $450,000 in just over three years by writing controlled substance prescriptions from his basement...