Shooting Up: A Memoir of Love, Loss and Addiction
Shooting Up chronicles Tepper’s childhood growing up in Madrid’s San Blas neighborhood, where his missionary parents founded a groundbreaking drug rehabilitation center during the height of Spain’s heroin epidemic. It is a tale of addiction, recovery, and loss seen through the eyes of an American boy navigating between his family’s dedication to helping others and the harsh realities of AIDS during a time of needle sharing. With lyrical prose and sharp-eyed honesty, he delivers an exceptionally powerful story of love and compassion. Shooting Up is a quietly devastating coming-of-age memoir that is as unsettling as it is unforgettable—a haunting exploration of belief, belonging, and the costs of sacrifice.
“Shooting Up is an extraordinary memoir of a unique childhood among heroin addicts during the AIDS epidemic, but it is a universal story of love and loss that is powerfully moving.” – George Stephanopoulos, political commentator and Good Morning America and ABC Sunday News anchor
“Shooting Up is an astonishing work that opens your eyes—and your heart—to a whole new world, one that is as beautiful and inspiring as it is gritty and harrowing. Jonathan Tepper is an extraordinarily gifted writer who has somehow managed to write a memoir that is at once heartbreaking, gut-wrenching, and joyous.” – Amy Chua, Yale Law professor and author of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother and The Golden Gate
“Jonathan Tepper’s gut-wrenching, inspiring memoir Shooting Up immerses you so deeply in its characters that you feel as if you’re living—and suffering—alongside them… this gorgeously crafted coming-of-age story is both luminous and profoundly humane. An unforgettable read that’s impossible to put down.” – Joseph Luzzi, author of My Two Italies and In a Dark Wood: What Dante Taught Me About Grief, Healing, and the Mysteries of Love
“Tepper’s story about addiction, AIDS and his parents’ work with addicts in Spain in the 1990s is a one-off insanely entertaining and wild account. In fact it’s the most riveting memoir I’ve ever read.” – Frank Schaeffer, author of Crazy for God
“[An] extraordinary coming-of-age story” Spectator
“A terrific story . . . You want an evocative account of the missionary experience? Here it is. A bracing social history of Aids in Spain? It does that too. But if it’s misery you’re after, look elsewhere. This is a memoir full of hope.” The Times
“A moving portrait of childhood” “Tepper’s writing is as finely crafted as one would expect of someone so well read.” The Times Literary Supplement
“A remarkable, true-life story about an American family offering salvation in Spain’s slums.” “an unadorned coming-of-age memoir rooted in faith and humble acts of service.” Our Verdict GET IT Kirkus
“It’s rare to read a book that merits comparison with Alcott, Dickens, and Defoe, but he has done it. This book deserves a place on the shelf alongside those classics. It’s one of the year’s best books.” The US Review of Books
“Riveting memoir exploring missionary work, addiction, and human kindness… This rousing memoir chronicles Tepper’s upbringing with his missionary parents” Booklife
“Shooting Up is without question the most compelling memoir I have ever read. There’s so much to think about.” Toby Smith
“The book is a spectacular achievement.” “I love autobiographies, and I have read many. And I can safely say that this is the best memoir I have read so far.” The Ironist
“Told in straightforward, inviting prose, the memoir feels nearly like a conversation. It’s genuine and heartfelt and important.” Virginia Reeves, longlisted for the Man Booker Prize
“If you’re looking to cry in empathy with an author’s grief and hardships yet sense an undercurrent of hope, this memoir might be the book for you… This book should find a wide readership… Above all, it addresses the deep, human question of what to do with too pervasive human suffering. With all these themes coalescing in one tale, I hope the best for its launch.” Scott Pearson
“The writing itself is gorgeous — literary without being pretentious, emotional without being maudlin. Tepper has a gift for the telling detail, the scene that captures an entire relationship or turning point in just a few sentences. …it has the raw honesty of Educated, the lyrical quality of The Glass Castle, and the profound humanity of When Breath Becomes Air. But ultimately, Shooting Up is its own singular achievement and a testament to the transformative power of love and the resilience of the human spirit.” Jophy Lin
“In all honesty, this is one of the best MK [missionary kid] memoirs I have ever read. Why do I say that? The writing is phenomenal… I highly recommend getting this book and reading it. You will be challenged. You will be encouraged. You will learn.” Raising TCKs
“I would recommend Shooting Up to readers who care about memoir, about addiction and recovery, about faith lived in messy real life rather than in slogans. It will suit anyone who wants a story that is gripping and easy to read but not easy to shake off, and who is willing to sit with pain, compassion, and complicated gratitude all at once.” Literary Titan
“an extraordinary memoir of hope and promise” “brutally honest” Mary Trimble
“…this book is easily the best book I have read so far this year.” The Book Corner Chronicles
“This is a story that is heartbreaking and strangely hopeful…. Expect to be deeply moved and challenged by this story.” Sue Fulmore
“Jonathan Tepper has crafted a moving and inspiring memoir…. Shooting Up is a joy to read.” Queensland Reviewers Collective
“Shooting Up is a very emotional book. It especially was for me…. vivid and shocking and powerful, and it made my heart thump hard in my chest as I read it; the pathos it evoked was almost startling.” Michael Mohr
The Myth of Capitalism: Monopolies and the Death of Competition
Picked as one of the Best Books of 2018: Economics by the Financial Times
Praise for The Myth of Capitalism: Monopolies and the Death of Competition
“Tepper and Hearn have written an impressive and important book, documenting via their own research and that of many scholars, the very substantial increase in concentration on the supply side of US industry, leading to a decline in competition and a substantial shift in market and political power away from consumers and labor and toward the owners of capital. The consequences extend to rising inequality, slowing productivity growth, and shifts in the pattern of regulation in favor of corporations. Pieces of these growth patterns have been described before. But this book uniquely pulls it altogether. One hopes that it will have the impact that it clearly deserves.”
Michael Spence, Economics professor at Stern School of Business NYU, Nobel Prize in economics 2001
“What’s wrong with American capitalism today? Why is it so good for the elite, and so bad for everyone else? Is inequality the problem? Tepper and Hearn make the case that inequality is the symptom, not the disease. The problem is too little competition, not too much. They provide an immensely readable and persuasive account, superbly well-informed by a mass of recent data and research.”
Sir Angus Deaton, Princeton University, Nobel Prize in economics 2015
“A broad-ranging and deeply-researched analysis of the inexorable growth of monopolies and oligopolies over the past four decades. Tepper makes a compelling case that the government’s failure to reign in tech titans and other corporate behemoths is at the root of perhaps the most troubling macroeconomic trends of our time, including rising inequality and slowing productivity. Clear and highly accessible, the book takes no prisoners, arguing that monopolists’ funding and sloppy thinking has corrupted every aspect of the system, from politicians to regulators to academics.”
Kenneth Rogoff, Thomas D. Cabot Professor of Public Policy and Professor of Economics at Harvard University
Author of bestseller This Time is Different