Stein handily weaves in facts and figures (last year, Vicodin was the most prescribed drug in the US), attitudes about addicts, and the history of narcotics in this country. He muses on our continuing lack of understanding of addiction: is it "mental illness, a loss of will, an obsessive-compulsive symptom, a character disorder, a spiritual condition?" And he emphasizes that "eleven million Americans take opiates for non-medical, recreational purposes." Though not intended as a primer on addiction, The Addict is authoritative, informative, and thought-provoking.
It is also heart-wrenching. By the end of the book, Stein has guided the reader to make the connection that he, as a sensitive and optimistic physician, makes: "that addiction has something important to say to and about us," no matter how different our life experiences might be from those of a drug-addicted person. The Addict is not only a book for our times, it is a call to re-examine our own family dynamics and to ponder the possibilities for positive change.
Related:
Unwell, Smooth lyricism, River song, More 
- Unwell
In combining the dual careers of novelist and physician, Michael Stein has honed his skills of observation of characters and patients.
- Smooth lyricism
In "The Sea Itself," Betsy Sholl writes of a No said to the storm tide: "...such a total No , it became a kind of Yes ,/so the world was suddenly everything at once,/solid and shifty, stormy and calm."
- River song
Tim Gautreaux writes of a South that never changes. Dense, humid, with a fecundity that is more than a match for any human development, his South is largely a no man's land where the trees close off the sky, their roots rise "from the soppy mud like stalagmites," and the calm is broken only by the "stout windings of water moccasins."
- Death watch
Michael Connelly's newspaper elegy
- Undercover
Ana Grey is the fearless heroine of April Smith's dark and thoughtful thriller series. But reading these fast-paced books shows the question to be more complicated. Ana Grey is, after all, not only a brave FBI agent, but also the cowering daughter of a racist bully.
- Plain spoken
In American prose, there is a plain style, a child of the 20th century, descending from Hemingway and Cather. The best New Yorker writers — James Thurber, Joseph Mitchell, Janet Malcolm — have it.
- Surf bored
Paranoia isn't what it used to be — not for Thomas Pynchon, at any rate.
- Fate’s pansy
Reimagining the past, as historical novelists must do, is difficult.
- Bases very loaded
Even as the sun rises on the new Major League Baseball season, skies are cloudy for the game we love.
- Do tell
The Internet has been an agglomerate of secrets since the first chat room was invented.
- Unauthorized!
I think it may have been sometime in the 1970s that the term “unauthorized” became sort of cool.
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Books
, Media, Book Reviews, William Morrow, More
, Media, Book Reviews, William Morrow, William Morrow, Michael Stein, Michael Stein, Books and Literature, Less
