A stunning depiction of corruption in the drug industry and those who confronted it.
A meticulous examination of how unscrupulous drug manufacturers, aided by thousands of pharmacies and doctors, produced and concealed a public health crisis.
Higham and Horwitz, who published groundbreaking exposés of the drug industry for the Washington Post, document how American opioid manufacturers, especially Purdue Pharma, recklessly distributed billions of pain pills across the country, generating an unprecedented drug epidemic. Their account of widespread corruption does, indeed, “open a horrifying panorama on corporate greed and political cowardice” while also showing “the efforts of community activists, DEA agents, and a coalition of lawyers to stop the human carnage.” In brisk, often harrowing chapters, the authors present riveting descriptions of government investigations into the crisis, struggles to thwart those investigations by targeted corporations and their allies, and the (ongoing) courtroom proceedings that have revealed an astoundingly expansive web of negligence, greed, and callousness. Along the way, Higham and Horwitz lay bare a series of alarming facts about the institutions that fostered the epidemic, including how several opioid manufacturers exerted extraordinary influence over members of Congress, their attempts to launch public relations campaigns that undermined faith in science, and the pronounced indifference of some of their executives to the catastrophe they helped create. A particularly gripping thread of the narrative follows the heroic efforts of whistleblower Joseph T. Rannazzisi, a retired and ostracized member of the DEA who called out both the amorality of the drug industry and the inefficacy of his former employer. Also striking are the descriptions of certain loosely regulated Florida clinics, which attracted enormous and sometimes unruly crowds of clients from across the country. The authors could have offered a little more attention to the voices of epidemic victims—for that, see Beth Macy’s potent duo, Dopesick and Raising Lazarus—but they effectively acknowledge the suffering that hundreds of thousands have endured, creating an unforgettable portrait of unthinkable corporate greed and malfeasance.
A stunning depiction of corruption in the drug industry and those who confronted it.Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5387-3720-0
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Twelve
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.
A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.
“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
"There's got to be something wrong with somebody who'd do a thing like that." This is Perry Edward Smith, talking about himself. "Deal me out, baby...I'm a normal." This is Richard Eugene Hickock, talking about himself. They're as sick a pair as Leopold and Loeb and together they killed a mother, a father, a pretty 17-year-old and her brother, none of whom they'd seen before, in cold blood. A couple of days before they had bought a 100 foot rope to garrote them—enough for ten people if necessary. This small pogrom took place in Holcomb, Kansas, a lonesome town on a flat, limitless landscape: a depot, a store, a cafe, two filling stations, 270 inhabitants. The natives refer to it as "out there." It occurred in 1959 and Capote has spent five years, almost all of the time which has since elapsed, in following up this crime which made no sense, had no motive, left few clues—just a footprint and a remembered conversation. Capote's alternating dossier Shifts from the victims, the Clutter family, to the boy who had loved Nancy Clutter, and her best friend, to the neighbors, and to the recently paroled perpetrators: Perry, with a stunted child's legs and a changeling's face, and Dick, who had one squinting eye but a "smile that works." They had been cellmates at the Kansas State Penitentiary where another prisoner had told them about the Clutters—he'd hired out once on Mr. Clutter's farm and thought that Mr. Clutter was perhaps rich. And this is the lead which finally broke the case after Perry and Dick had drifted down to Mexico, back to the midwest, been seen in Kansas City, and were finally picked up in Las Vegas. The last, even more terrible chapters, deal with their confessions, the law man who wanted to see them hanged, back to back, the trial begun in 1960, the post-ponements of the execution, and finally the walk to "The Corner" and Perry's soft-spoken words—"It would be meaningless to apologize for what I did. Even inappropriate. But I do. I apologize." It's a magnificent job—this American tragedy—with the incomparable Capote touches throughout. There may never have been a perfect crime, but if there ever has been a perfect reconstruction of one, surely this must be it.
Pub Date: Jan. 7, 1965
ISBN: 0375507906
Page Count: 343
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1965
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