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Apple Best Books of 2021 * Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Nonfiction * Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal * Shortlisted for the Zocalo Book Prize
From the New York Times bestselling author of Dreamland, a searing follow-up that explores the terrifying next stages of the opioid epidemic and the quiet yet ardent stories of community repair.
Sam Quinones traveled from Mexico to main streets across the U.S. to create Dreamland, a groundbreaking portrait of the opioid epidemic that awakened the nation. As the nation struggled to put back the pieces, Quinones was among the first to see the dangers that lay ahead: synthetic drugs and a new generation of kingpins whose product could be made in Magic Bullet blenders. In fentanyl, traffickers landed a painkiller a hundred times more powerful than morphine. They laced it into cocaine, meth, and counterfeit pills to cause tens of thousands of deaths-at the same time as Mexican traffickers made methamphetamine cheaper and more potent than ever, creating, Sam argues, swaths of mental illness and a surge in homelessness across the United States.
Quinones hit the road to investigate these new threats, discovering how addiction is exacerbated by consumer-product corporations. “In a time when drug traffickers act like corporations and corporations like traffickers,” he writes, “our best defense, perhaps our only defense, lies in bolstering community.” Amid a landscape of despair, Quinones found hope in those embracing the forgotten and ignored, illuminating the striking truth that we are only as strong as our most vulnerable.
Weaving analysis of the drug trade into stories of humble communities, The Least of Us delivers an unexpected and awe-inspiring response to the call that shocked the nation in Sam Quinones's award-winning Dreamland.
Published | Nov 02 2021 |
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Format | Hardback |
Edition | 1st |
Extent | 432 |
ISBN | 9781635574357 |
Imprint | Bloomsbury Publishing |
Dimensions | 9 x 6 inches |
Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
This layered chronicle traces how methamphetamine and fentanyl became scourges of American life. . . . Quinones places the narrative in a range of illuminating contexts, including the brain chemistry of addiction; how an overdose in Akron, Ohio, led investigators to dealers based in China; and the decline of America's deindustrializing towns and cities.
The New Yorker
Sam Quinones is perhaps our best big-picture analyst of America's markets for addictive drugs. . . . He is a fluent storyteller who delivers his argument through a palette of affecting stories about people and communities torn apart, and about the small, step-by-step reclamations earned through patient, daily, humble work. Few readers will keep dry eyes through the entire book
Washington Post
American pain. This is the territory of Sam Quinones, a masterly reporter and vivid, lyrical writer, whose last book, Dreamland won a National Book Critics Circle Award and awakened readers to the problem of opiate addiction in the United States. . . . In The Least of Us, Quinones applies a similarly kaleidoscopic approach to 'designer drugs' like fentanyl and methamphetamine.
New York Times Book Review
Jam-packed with amazing facts and, like all of Quinones' work, reads like a thriller. You may think you know this story. Trust me, you don't. I normally don't write book reviews, but Quinones' book is well worth your time.
Ann Coulter, Townhall
Together with his earlier Dreamland, The Least of Us confirms his place as a leading chronicler of an American nightmare.
New York Journal of Books
Chronicles how meth-ravaged communities have broken the cycle of drug abuse, violence and despair.
Los Angeles Times, 11 Books to Add to Your Reading List
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