Harriet Ryan in the Los Angeles Times:
When journalist Sam Quinones went looking for a buyer for the book that became “Dreamland” a decade ago, there was little interest. Only one publisher was interested in the story of an Ohio everytown savaged first by painkiller-pushing Purdue Pharma and then by Mexican black-tar heroin cartels.
“Nobody really knew what an opioid was,” recalled Quinones, who at the time was a Los Angeles Times staff writer.
The 2015 book became a commercial and critical hit, winning a National Book Critics Circle award. Others followed with works about the opioid epidemic, including Beth Macy’s “Dopesick,” now a Hulu series, and Patrick Radden Keefe’s “Empire of Pain,” about Purdue’s owners, the Sackler family. The company eventually crumbled into bankruptcy under the weight of thousands of lawsuits.
More here.