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Book Cover for: American Pain: How a Young Felon and His Ring of Doctors Unleashed America's Deadliest Drug Epidemic, John Temple

American Pain: How a Young Felon and His Ring of Doctors Unleashed America's Deadliest Drug Epidemic

John Temple

* Finalist for the Edgar(R) Award in Best Fact Crime
* New York Post, "The Post's Favorite Books of 2015"
* Suspense Magazine's "Best True Crime Books of 2015"
* Gold Medal Winner for Foreword Reviews' INDIEFAB Book of the Year in True Crime
* Publishers Weekly, Big Indie Book of Fall 2015

The rise and fall of the nation's largest painkiller distribution ring, "American Pain," a mega-clinic that served as a prototype for the rest. Pill mills have spread across the country, but this is where it started. It's a gritty story of lax regulations, conflicts of interest, and good ol' fashioned greed. With an eccentric cast of real characters, bizarre events, and a setting that runs from Kentucky to Florida, it's also a stranger-than-fiction Southern Gothic tale.

Book Details

  • Publisher: Lyons Press
  • Publish Date: Aug 1st, 2016
  • Pages: 320
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 9.00in - 6.00in - 0.70in - 0.90lb
  • EAN: 9781493026661
  • Categories: White Collar CrimeUnited States - State & Local - South (AL,AR,FL,GA,KY,LA,MS,Substance Abuse & Addictions - General

About the Author

John Temple is a professor of journalism at West Virginia University and the author of Deadhouse and The Last Lawyer, the latter of which won the Scribes Award given by the Society of Legal Writers. C-SPAN, the Washington Post, Raleigh News and Observer, and many other media outlets have covered him and his work, and before teaching he worked in newspapers for six years at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Greensboro News and Record, and the Tampa Tribune. Temple lives with his wife and two sons in Morgantown, West Virginia.

Praise for this book

"American Pain made me angrier with every page. Why? Because John Temple has so adeptly reported this story of how a handful of criminals and shady doctors in Florida profited from the poverty and addiction of the Appalachian South." --James Higdon, national bestselling author of The Cornbread Mafia: A Homegrown Syndicate's Code of Silence and the Biggest Marijuana Bust in American History
"John Temple's American Pain takes you on a hysterically funny, yet equally tragic, tour of Florida's pill mill industry as the painkiller epidemic was reaching a fever pitch.... a must-read for anyone trying to understand this government-sanctioned drug and the destructive power of Big Pharma."
--Melisa Wallack, Oscar-nominated co-writer of Dallas Buyers Club
"John Temple's American Pain is as addicting a read as the little pills he writes about. Temple details the brazen operations of some of America's largest pill mills and how they thrived in plain sight for years before the government took action."
--Jason Ryan, author of Jackpot: High Times, High Seas, and the Sting That Launched the War on Drugs
Fascinating. . . . thoroughly reported. . . . American Pain offers a window into America's drug-addiction epidemic.
(Starred Review). . . . [An] exhilarating blow-by-blow account. . . . Journalism professor Temple dissects the . . . criminal operation and documents the rise and fall of American Pain with precision and authority in this highly readable true crime account.
In his masterful nonfiction book American Pain, John Temple lays bare the perfect storm of lax regulation, aggressive marketing, greed, and addiction that created an opioid epidemic. .. .Temple's writing is propulsive