“Something startling is happening to middle-aged white Americans,” reported Gina Kolata on the front page of the NY Times, this past November. “Unlike every other age group, unlike every other racial and ethnic group, unlike their counterparts in other rich countries, death rates in this group have been rising, not falling.”

Kolata’s big story was based on research by 2 Princeton University economists, the recent Nobel Prize winner Angus Deaton and his wife Anne Case, and they identified the causes of perhaps half a million preventable deaths: “an epidemic of suicides and afflictions stemming from substance abuse: alcoholic liver disease and overdoses of heroin and prescription opioids.”

Behind this huge story, an equally big, even more sinister one told by investigative reporter

Sam Quinones, author of DREAMLAND: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic.

Reading Room

Sam Quinones’ Website

Sam Quinones’ Biography

Sam Quinones’ Wikipedia Page

“Drug Overdoses Propel Rise in Mortality Rates of Young Whites” The New York Times

“Overdose Deaths Reached A New High in 2014” The New York Times

“More Details on Rising Mortality Among Middle-Aged Whites” The New York Times

“More White People Die From Suicide and Substance Abuse: Why?” The New York Times

“Death Rates Rising For Middle-Aged White Americans, Study Finds” The New York Times

“Despair, American Style” The New York Times

“Rising Mortality Rates for Working-Class Whites” The New York Times

“Why Did the Death Rate Rise Among Middle-Aged White Americans?” The New Yorker

“Heroin Doesn’t Have to Be a Killer” The New York Times

“Prestigious Medical Journals Rejected Stunning Study on Deaths Among Middle-Aged Whites” The Washington Post

“Losing Ground at Midlife in America” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America