Beth Macy’s Dopesick

There’s no shortage of statistics about the depth of America’s opioid epidemic: 72,000 overdose deaths just last year, more than 2 million with problems, and so on. But numbers only begin to tell the whole story. Beth Macy, who has spent three decades reporting on central Appalachia—which she claims is the birthplace of the modern opioid epidemic—focuses her book on social and economic trends and how they affect ordinary people. Our reviewers, colleagues at the Columbia University Division on Substance Use Disorders, are well qualified to comment.