Steroid Nation

"Steroid Nation is a rip-roaring good rock'n'roll read. How could it not be? It's the classic American drug story up there with Blow, Nikki Sixx's autobiography and the Hunter S. Thompson story." – Steve Wells, The Guardian


They are the drugs that make millionaires, and cause careers to crash. They lurk at the cross-section of science and scandal, and the list of stars who've been laid high and low by them grows every day. In Steroid Nation, Shaun Assael traces the history of America's steroid-mania, and demonstrates why it is still such a stubborn, enduring phenomenon.


Beginning his epic story in 1981 with Dan Duchaine, the godfather of America's steroid movement, Assael follows the drug as it journeys from the Venice Beach gyms christened by Arnold Schwarzenegger to NFL locker rooms to the world of MLB, which found itself paralyzed in the 2000s by a parade of perp walks and hand-wringing headlines. From Barry Bonds to Marion Jones, Lance Armstrong to A-Rod, Steroid Nation tells the story of wildly ambitious athletes who felt they couldn't compete without a chemical edge.


Part detective story, part medical investigation, and part sociological examination, Steroid Nation is a groundbreaking work on the most compelling story in the sports world today.