Macy tells these stories largely by ceding the stage to her subjects, addicts and workers alike. One of her strengths as a journalist is doing the reporting and then knowing when to get out of the way. Raising Lazarus, like Dopesick, never turns into The Beth Macy Show. The stories occasionally come a little fast and furious, making it difficult to tell one player from another, but everybody gets a say, even the Kiwanis Club president who suggests the overdosed be left to die so their organs can be harvested ... There’s still no end in sight for the opioid crisis, but as long as Macy remains on the job, we can count on compassionate dispatches from the front lines.

Macy continues this essential conversation in Raising Lazarus. Her fourth book zeroes in on why this crisis continues and how things can change, and the facts she presents will enlighten you and likely change your opinions on many important overdose-related issues ... Once again, Macy's up close and personal reporting is riveting as she weaves together multiple storylines ... The genius of Macy's writing is that she makes readers care, on every page, as she bears witness. This is heartfelt, informed writing at its best, and always personal. With Dopesick and now Raising Lazarus, Macy is a social historian and change-maker at the top of her game.

... [Macy] offers hope, however muted, that the opioid epidemic is indeed a solvable problem ... Macy eschews the false objectivity of 'both sides' journalism and directly identifies the villains of this story: the Sackler family, who own Purdue Pharma, and the incompetent policymakers and greedy executives who compounded what the Sacklers started.

When you think about it, a lot of good narrative journalism is sought by readers already sharing the writer's views and wishing to understand more. A genre that might be slighted as 'preaching to the choir' is potent for readers seeking to organize their thinking and contribute to solving social problems ... Macy's Raising Lazarus is another remarkable book of this sort, bursting with lucid and crucial argumentation ... The book has a poverty-conscious whisper of Liberation Theology running through it, while making no demands upon readers beyond compassion for the souls who've gotten themselves in this jam and ride it into scuzzy self-neglect ... Macy's books offer frank 'advocacy journalism' of the refreshing sort that calls out selfish lies. The straight-up flavor of her writing is delightful if you believe her, and it's hard not to ... Dopesick and Raising Lazarus are reverse Pandora's Boxes. They are not only fascinating reading but also powerful guides to remedying widespread sickness, misery and death.

In many ways, the new book represents Macy, one of the pre-eminent chroniclers of the nation’s opioid epidemic, at her full-bore fearless best. Heartsick and determined, she grills drug policy scholars and former drug czars alike ... With her big heart affixed conspicuously to her sleeve, Macy introduces readers to people mired in addiction and to those who seek to help them. (The two are often not mutually exclusive) ... even more overstuffed than Dopesick: There are so many programs, each with acronyms and angels, that they tend to bleed together. In her zeal to be comprehensive, Macy sacrifices a measure of reader-friendly momentum and focus, even as she acknowledges that the crisis is ;an elephant,' difficult to get one’s arms around neatly...But the opioid epidemic, which touches on race, economics, health, politics, crime and stigma, is not just an elephant. It is a herd of elephants ... these chapters feel like a misfire, particularly since much of the material is not new, including her re-creation of the well-documented crusade of the artist Nan Goldin, who emerged from an addiction to painkillers to lead very public shamings of the Sacklers. Macy gives extensive credit to lawyers whom those familiar with the Purdue litigation might view as minor players. As she grapples dutifully with the Gordian knot of the case, which is currently before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, the tortuous demands of the yearslong litigation flatten Macy’s more typically lively, evocative prose.

While many Americans may feel that justice has been served, masks have been ripped off and a sense of normalcy can resume, Macy proves in her skewering yet inspirational book that we are nowhere close to ending the epidemic that has cost us well over a million lives ... Although Raising Lazarus is full of shocking statistics like these, and even more heartbreaking stories, there is a through line of hope here, one that comes with uplifting stories and action items ... If there is one negative to the book, it is that Macy devotes perhaps too much time covering the Sackler bankruptcy trial and the Purdue litigation. While her portrayals of characters like Nan Goldin and gumption-filled lawyer Michael Quinn are evocative and lively, much of the legalese of the case feels recycled and distracts from the overarching narrative ... confirms Beth Macy as our nation’s best hope at chronicling the opioid epidemic --- how we got here, the reality of where we are now, and where we go from here --- by highlighting not the criminals behind the deaths but the ones who can no longer speak for themselves and the heroes working against all odds to ensure that no others join their ranks.

... a passionate account ... While the courtroom coverage can be overheated and muddled, Macy excels at vivid, detailed depictions of the day-to-day struggles of dealing with addiction in several small towns in West Virginia, Indiana, and North Carolina during a period when those communities were also confronting the pandemic. She argues persuasively that substance abuse should be treated as a medical condition rather than a crime, and focuses on treatments with the potential to help, emphasizing the efforts of people who are necessarily skirting the law in order to provide aid to those who need it most. Thoroughly engaged in the lives of her subjects, never dispassionate, Macy immerses readers in horrific reality while illuminating faint hints of hope.

... another damning indictment of the Sackler family ... A profoundly disconcerting book that, with luck, will inspire reform to aid the dopesick and punish their suppliers.