Get outraged with March's book of the month

At the beginning of this month’s pick, author Gardiner Harris points out that pharmaceutical and medical giant Johnson & Johnson is “a quintessentially American company.” 

He’s right: for over a century, its business has been built on some of the most trusted brands in the nation: Band-Aid, Tylenol, Johnson’s Baby, and more. But under the surface, the company has also been a hotbed of deceptive marketing, suppressed data, and profiteering that has led to distress, pain—and even death—for millions of Americans.

Our Curious Reading Club book for March is No More Tears: The Dark Secrets of Johnson & Johnson, an astonishing story about a company with a long, complicated and often malicious history that has also proven almost immune to reputational damage. 

Harris, who is a reporter at the New York Times, comes through as a fair but stern prosecutor as he details the company’s transgressions. It includes baby powder riddled with asbestos; drugs peddled to children with abandon; medical implants that caused patients immense pain; and the debacles that happened when it tried to produce a Covid vaccine. 

This is an exceptional piece of journalism. Publisher’s Weekly called No More Tears “a masterpiece of muckraking” and it’s a finalist for the 2025 National Book Critics Circle award (along with another Curious pick, Karen Hao’s Empire of AI.)

I don’t choose many bestsellers, but when I do it’s for a reason. I’m excited to share this gripping, eye-opening book with you.

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