Alcohol: Cradle To Grave

Alcohol: Cradle to Grave

From Booklist This disturbing book is based on a Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper series on alcohol abuse and its social impact. Newhouse, a reporter for the Great Falls Tribune, focuses on the gritty Montana town where bars that open at 8 a.m and local unemployment account for high rates of alcohol and drug abuse among Native Americans. Newhouse was covering alcohol-related murders on a Montana Indian reservation when he came up with the idea for reporting on the social costs of alcohol abuse. This book is a diary of Newhouse's reporting, including interviews with alcoholics as they struggle day-to-day with their illness. His subjects reveal their darkest secrets and frightening recollections of alcoholism in their families. Newhouse visited Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, treatment programs, and bars; he also accompanied police on calls to alcohol-fueled disturbances. He includes statistics on the overt and hidden costs of alcoholism in hospital and program treatment, police enforcement, social services, and the proliferation of one of the most dangerous legal substances taken by Americans. Vanessa BushCopyright