Today Americans are the fattest people on the face of the earth (save for the inhabitants of a few South Seas islands). About 61 percent of Americans are overweight. This book shows how and why Americans got that way.

Greg Critser's brilliantly incisive Generation Rx moves the conversation about prescription drugs to where it hits home: our own bodies. How, he asks, has "big pharma" created a nation of pharmaceutical tribes, each with its own unique beliefs, taboos, and brand loyalties? How have powerful chemical compounds for chronic diseases, once controlled by physicians, become substances we feel entitled to, whether we need them or not? How did we come to hate drug companies but love their pills?

Read on in Generation Rx for:

-- exclusive interviews with the...