Fentanyl, Inc.

Fentanyl is the gravest drug scourge in memory, said Matt McCarthy in USA Today, and “the problem is only getting worse.” Ben Westhoff’s “timely and agonizing” new book lays out how the powerful synthetic painkiller crossed into the illicit drug market in the 1990s and began pouring in from China. Westhoff, a journalist, dove into the research, even infiltrating a pair of Chinese drug labs, and he mixes victims’ stories with industry history. Sadly, the crisis he describes appears unstoppable.