The thrilling account of the high-stakes struggle against pharmaceutical giant Merck and its bestselling (but deadly) painkiller Vioxx. Snigdha Prakash was born and brought up in Delhi, India and has lived in the United States since she came here as an undergraduate. She got her start in journalism as a copy aide at the Washington Post writing for the paper’s local and business sections. She covered the mortgage industry and its biggest players, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, for the American Banker, an independent, daily newspaper, from 1993 to 1998. Most recently, she was a reporter for National Public Radio (NPR) from 1998 to 2007, where she investigated and documented several important chapters in the history of the painkiller Vioxx on NPR’s flagship news magazines, “All Things Considered” and “Morning Edition.” In 2009, she was awarded the Gene Roberts Book Award by the Fund for Investigative Journalism. This is her first book.