Book Club

On June 6, 2015, David and Jackie Siegel received the call that no parent should ever get. Their beautiful, vibrant, 18-year-old daughter Victoria had died of a drug overdose. The Siegels vowed to do whatever it takes to prevent this from happening to other parents.

Right after Victoria passed away, Jackie received a text from one of Victoria’s friends directing her to look in her bedroom nightstand for a secret diary she had kept – and suggesting they publish it. The Siegels decided to honor Victoria’s wish.

“Our daughter’s legacy is that her death will save thousands of other people’s lives” – that’s the commitment by her parents, David and Jackie Siegel, and their reason for publishing her diary- teen slang, bad language and all. Victoria’s diary, in her own hand and featuring her own art, is bookended by intros by her parents before it, and medical advice, tips and resources following her diary.

Victoria’s Voice is a gripping peek inside the mind of sometimes happy, healthy teen and other times a teen dramatically influenced by drugs and alcohol. This is Victoria’s Voice – from beyond the grave. It could save your child’s life.

Randy Grimes quickly learned one important truth as the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ top draft pick: play through pain, or get cut.

This is just part of being a pro athlete, he told himself.

Growing up in Tyler, Texas, Grimes’s life was very much on center. A childhood spent in church on Sundays and on the gridiron all week turned into a football scholarship to Baylor, marriage to his college sweetheart, and a coveted NFL roster spot.

When the Bucs’ starting center began piling up brutal hits, he determined to do anything to stay in the game. If the pills prescribed by the team doctors could help, Grimes would take them.

All in a day’s work, he told himself.

Even before Grimes left the NFL, his life began slipping off center. Eventually, he lost almost everything he owned, the respect of his children, and very nearly his life, before tumbling out of the car and crawling on hands and knees into a treatment center—literally—into a life-changing miracle.

Off Center is Randy Grimes’s riveting story of having it all, playing the sport he loved, losing almost everything, and ultimately finding redemption and hope. Witness the addiction trap that binds millions and claims thousands of lives each year—and the steps Grimes took to reclaim his life and guide others.

Today Grimes and his wife, Lydia, stage drug and alcohol interventions for professional athletes, celebrities, business leaders, and everyday Americans to find recovery from addiction.

Recovery has become his playbook. His treatment center colleagues are his team. And those with addiction are his community.

Above all, Grimes wants people to know: Even when the world seems to be yours, there is room to fall. And even when that world seems to slip away, there is hope.

“Timbi Talks about Addiction” is a softcover 32 page superbly illustrated picture book designed to help children cope with a parent’s substance abuse. Through Timbi, children learn that: addiction is a disease, it is not their fault, their varied emotions are valid. Timbi teaches them coping skills that they can use whether they are alone, or with a trusted adult to give them a much-needed sense of control in a chronically stressful environment. Timbi has been nationally recognized as an ideal resource to help families, teachers, counselors, physicians, judges, and advocates in the fight against the long-term damaging impact of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs).

Many have hailed the widespread use of generic drugs as one of the most important public-health developments of the twenty-first century. Today, almost 90 percent of our pharmaceutical market is comprised of generics, the majority of which are manufactured overseas. We have been reassured by our doctors, our pharmacists and our regulators that generic drugs are identical to their brand-name counterparts, just less expensive. But is this really true?

Katherine Eban’s Bottle of Lies exposes the deceit behind generic-drug manufacturing—and the attendant risks for global health. Drawing on exclusive accounts from whistleblowers and regulators, as well as thousands of pages of confidential FDA documents, Eban reveals an industry where fraud is rampant, companies routinely falsify data, and executives circumvent almost every principle of safe manufacturing to minimize cost and maximize profit, confident in their ability to fool inspectors. Meanwhile, patients unwittingly consume medicine with unpredictable and dangerous effects.

The story of generic drugs is truly global. It connects middle America to China, India, sub-Saharan Africa and Brazil, and represents the ultimate litmus test of globalization: what are the risks of moving drug manufacturing offshore, and are they worth the savings?

A decade-long investigation with international sweep, high-stakes brinkmanship and big money at its core, Bottle of Lies reveals how the world’s greatest public-health innovation has become one of its most astonishing swindles.

“Bottle of Lies is an invaluable exposé, a reportorial tour de force and a well-turned epic.” (New York Times)

Stolen, tainted, and compromised counterfeit medicine has increasingly made its way into a poorly regulated distribution system—reaching vulnerable and unsuspecting patients who stake their lives on it. The heart of the problem lies in South Florida—and Dangerous Doses exposes it through a “ragtag group of seasoned investigators who seem as if they were cast right out of an episode of The Wire” (U.S. News & World Report).

In Katherine Eban’s hard-hitting examination of America’s secret ring of drug counterfeiters, these tireless investigators follow the trail of medication, stolen in a seemingly minor break-in, as it funnels into a sprawling national network of drug polluters. Their pursuit stretches from a strip joint in South Miami to the halls of Congress, as they battle entrenched political interests and uncover an increasing threat to America’s health.

Eban’s revelatory and damning crusade “combines investigative diligence, a natural storyteller’s gift for narrative, and a consumer advocate’s practical prescriptions for what to do about the counterfeit drugs that may have contaminated the supply at your local drug store. The result: A rare literary event—muckraking with a human face” (Victor Navasky, former publisher of The Nation).

An investigation into crime and corruption that offers “a journey into the underbelly of the pharmaceutical industry” (Buzz Bissinger)