Author Spotlight

Jonathan Tepper

I have been known mainly for my economic writing, but Shooting Up: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Addiction is a literary memoir that I hope will stand the test of time. Most importantly, I wanted it to be a great read that people couldn't put down. I also wanted it to be a powerful, spare memoir that would touch readers. It had to be emotional without being sentimental, literate without being pretentious. The very best books entertain, educate, and elevate the reader. I hope the book does all three.

In the 1980s, I grew up between cultures in Madrid, and my parents were Christian missionaries who started a drug rehab among heroin addicts. Almost all the addicts had shared needles and were HIV+. They became my older brothers and sisters, and most died of AIDS. Yet I had never thought of writing about it. Years ago, I was working as analyst at a hedge fund and living in the Upper West Side of Manhattan. One weekend I went to Barnes and Noble on 82nd Street and saw this book with a beautiful cover by Bruce Davidson. And it's titled Flying Over 96th Street, Memoir of an East Harlem White Boy by Dr Thomas L. Webber. I picked it up and the prose was beautiful. It was a story of a blond-haired, blue-eyed boy. His parents had moved him to East Harlem in the 1950s, and he grew up in the 50s and 60s during the Civil Rights era. I thought it was such a beautiful evocation of a time and a place and his friends, some of whom had passed. It was very elegiac. And I thought, someone needs to do this for my friends. Many of my friends had passed, as too many had died of AIDS. That was the impetus for writing Shooting Up. What are you working on now? My day job is running an investment fund, so I mainly write quarterly letters to my investors. It is a world away from writing a literary memoir or the world I grew up in.

One early reader of Shooting Up said, "When I got to the end and saw the photos, I thought the addicts might look different. They look so normal." Others have told me they feel the know the characters well after reading Shooting Up. I hope the book leads to more love and empathy. I hope people will realize that the poor, alcoholics, addicts, AIDS patients, and others are human, just like us. We are all capable of transformation and growth. We are all worthy of love, dignity, and care. I think if we all thought this way, the world might be a brighter, less awful place sometimes.

It is a difficult task writing a book, but it is almost harder trying to let the world know a book exists. It is difficult to get reviewed in major newspapers or magazines. Book critics are being fired at major publications, and it is increasingly difficult to get reviewed. I'm grateful to thoughtful review sites like Kirkus and The US Review of Books that give an honest, unbiased review. I hope it helps readers discover Shooting Up. It was a labor of love to write, and it was a love letter to friends and family. Almost all early readers are moved to tears an love it, so I hope it helps spread the word.

About the Author: Jonathan Tepper is the author of several acclaimed financial books, including The Myth of Capitalism. A Rhodes Scholar, he earned degrees in History and Economics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an MLitt from the University of Oxford. Born in the U.S., Jonathan came of age in Madrid’s San Blas neighborhood, where his parents ran one of the country's first drug rehabilitation centers. Shooting Up is his first memoir, offering a deeply personal view of life at the intersection of faith, addiction, and resilience. He and his wife Stacey have a two-year-old who is a human hurricane of curiosity and keeps them busy. Jonathan returns to Madrid as often as he can .