"In one of the most gripping ethnographies in years, Brothers maps marginalization across multiple scales, taking us from the cold architecture of structural violence, to the improvised solidarities of the street, to the tense moment when a needle finds a vein. This book is a reckoning--about those we've cast off, about how they learn to survive, and about who counts as an expert in the world of substance use."--Forrest Stuart, Stanford University"A moving and empathetic picture of a hidden world, where people who inject drugs struggle daily to survive and help each other when no one else will. Hit Doctors tells the story of a highly stigmatized group of people doing their best in the face of exploitation and unfathomable trauma."--Maia Szalavitz, author of Undoing Drugs: How Harm Reduction Is Changing the Future of Drugs and Addiction"This compelling and truly original ethnographic exploration of hit doctors and their clients plunges readers into a domain where uncredentialed expertise is the only viable response to social neglect. With this fascinating account of unconventional medical practice, Brothers breaks new ground in the study of expertise and authority at the rough edges of our health care and social service systems."--Steven Epstein, author of The Quest for Sexual Health: How an Elusive Ideal Has Transformed Science, Politics, and Everyday Life"A gripping, poignant, highly readable account of urban drug use. The book provides an unusually vivid portrait of poverty in America. It is excellent at highlighting how social conditions end up facilitating drug use in urban America. Superb for teaching!"--Annette Lareau, author of Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life"Written with wit and empathy, Hit Doctors is a unique contribution to our understanding of uncredentialed expertise in the context of harm reduction with people who use drugs. Intimate without being invasive, Sarah Brothers's deft and hard-hitting ethnographic work is a masterful guide to the protective strategies used in everyday lives of extreme precarity."--Nancy Campbell, author of OD: Naloxone and the Politics of Overdose