Generation RX: How Prescription Drugs Are Altering American Lives, Minds, and Bodies

This in-depth look at the rise of Big Pharma and pill marketing is "a page-turner" (Booklist, starred review). A finalist for a PEN America Literary Award for Research Nonfiction, this book takes a deep look at how the pharmaceutical industry--with some help from the medical and insurance fields and from American consumers themselves--has pushed its products, often at the expense of our health. Generation Rx reveals the roots of many of the widespread societal problems we face today, explaining how marketing efforts changed powerful chemical compounds for chronic diseases, once controlled by physicians, into substances we feel entitled to, whether we need them or not. Using exclusive interviews with the strategists, scientists, and current and former heads of GlaxoSmithKline, Eli Lilly, Merck, Roche, and more, the author of Fat Land presents a "fascinating and disturbing" story of business interests unleashed on an unsuspecting public, and a cultural shift that has caused lasting--and sometimes lethal--damage (New Scientist). "What Fast Food Nation did for the way Americans eat, Greg Critser does for the way we medicate ourselves." --Michael Pollan, bestselling author of The Omnivore's Dilemma

About the Author :
Greg Critser is a longtime chronicler of the modern pharmaceutical industry and the politics of medicine. His columns and essays on the subject have appeared in Harper's magazine, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and elsewhere. Critser is the author of Fat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World, which the American Diabetes Association called "the definitive journalistic account of the modern obesity epidemic." He lives in Pasadena, California, with his wife, Antoinette Mongelli.

Review :
"In this informed study, Critser sounds the impassioned alert that your medicine cabinet may be hazardous to your health." Library Journal, starred review "The saga of big pharma gives new meaning to the term 'slippery slope' . . . solid, thorough, and told with vigor." --Publishers Weekly "If a knowledgeable public is the key, this straightforward, highly readable book is a step in the right direction." --Kirkus Reviews "What Fast Food Nation did for the way Americans eat, Greg Critser does forth way we medicate ourselves." --Michael Pollan "Provocative . . . he does a lucid job conveying the dramatic ways in which the development and marketing of pharmaceuticals have changed over the last two decades and the equally dramatic and often disturbing consequences of this phenomenon." --The New York Times "Critser has a knack for turning the words of the pharmaceutical industry . . . against it, packing every page with enough 'Oh, wow!' information to jade even the most hardened cynic." --Booklist, ALA, starred review Reader's Prize 2005: "While if may have been about time someone levied some harsh criticism against the pharmaceutical industry, Critser goes above and beyond the call of duty." --Elle