Dreamland
The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic
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Dreamland
Narrated by:
Tom Jordan
Buy Now for £15.60
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Narrated by:
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Tom Jordan
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By:
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Sam Quinones
Winner of the NBCC Award for General Nonfiction
Named on Slate's 50 Best Nonfiction Books of the Past 25 Years, Amazon's Best Books of the Year 2015—Michael Botticelli, U.S. Drug Czar (Politico) Favorite Book of the Year—Angus Deaton, Nobel Prize Economics (Bloomberg/WSJ) Best Books of 2015—Matt Bevin, Governor of Kentucky (WSJ) Books of the Year—Slate.com’s 10 Best Books of 2015—Entertainment Weekly’s 10 Best Books of 2015 —Buzzfeed’s 19 Best Nonfiction Books of 2015—The Daily Beast’s Best Big Idea Books of 2015—Seattle Times’ Best Books of 2015—Boston Globe’s Best Books of 2015—St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s Best Books of 2015—The Guardian’s The Best Book We Read All Year—Audible’s Best Books of 2015—Texas Observer’s Five Books We Loved in 2015—Chicago Public Library’s Best Nonfiction Books of 2015
From a small town in Mexico to the boardrooms of Big Pharma to main streets nationwide, an explosive and shocking account of addiction in the heartland of America.
In 1929, in the blue-collar city of Portsmouth, Ohio, a company built a swimming pool the size of a football field; named Dreamland, it became the vital center of the community. Now, addiction has devastated Portsmouth, as it has hundreds of small rural towns and suburbs across America—addiction like no other the country has ever faced. How that happened is the riveting story of Dreamland.
With a great reporter’s narrative skill and the storytelling ability of a novelist, acclaimed journalist Sam Quinones weaves together two classic tales of capitalism run amok whose unintentional collision has been catastrophic. The unfettered prescribing of pain medications during the 1990s reached its peak in Purdue Pharma’s campaign to market OxyContin, its new, expensive—extremely addictive—miracle painkiller. Meanwhile, a massive influx of black tar heroin—cheap, potent, and originating from one small county on Mexico’s west coast, independent of any drug cartel—assaulted small town and mid-sized cities across the country, driven by a brilliant, almost unbeatable marketing and distribution system. Together these phenomena continue to lay waste to communities from Tennessee to Oregon, Indiana to New Mexico.
Introducing a memorable cast of characters—pharma pioneers, young Mexican entrepreneurs, narcotics investigators, survivors, and parents—Quinones shows how these tales fit together. Dreamland is a revelatory account of the corrosive threat facing America and its heartland.©2015 Sam Quinones (P)2022 Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
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Critic reviews
Does what ‘Fast Food Nation’ did for fast food to Black Tar Heroin and oxycodone . . . A stunning journalistic journey that follows the history and narrative trajectories that lead to this entirely new style of cultivating drug addiction . . . I just love this book. (Marc Maron)
The most original writer on Mexico and the border out there.
Over the last 15 years, he has filed the best dispatches about Mexican migration and its effects on the United States and Mexico, bar none.
Journalist Quinones weaves an extraordinary story, including the personal journeys of the addicted, the drug traffickers, law enforcement, and scores of families affected by the scourge, as he details the social, economic, and political forces that eventually destroyed communities in the American heartland and continues to have a resounding impact. (starred review)
Quinones' research ensures that there is something legitimately interesting (and frequently horrifying) on every page. A-.
[A] compelling examination . . . a driven and important narrative.
In Dreamland, former Los Angeles Times reporter Sam Quinones deftly recounts how a flood of prescription pain meds, along with black tar heroin from Nayarit, Mexico, transformed the once-vital blue-collar city of Portsmouth, Ohio, and other American communities into heartlands of addiction. With prose direct yet empathic, he interweaves the stories of Mexican entrepreneurs, narcotics agents, and small-town folks whose lives were upended by the deluge of drugs, leaving them shaking their heads, wondering how they could possibly have resisted.
Smack is back in the news as heroin use spikes and busts pile up at the border, making Dreamland a timely book. Veteran journalist and storyteller Sam Quinones provides investigative reporting to explain the latest surge. But he also goes way deeper; he tells the social and human stories at the heart of the opiate trade and how it tortures the souls of America and Mexico. (Ioan Grillo, author of EL NARCO)
Dreamland spreads out like a transnational episode of The Wire, alternately maddening, thrilling, depressing, and with writing as sharp and insightful as a razor blade. You cannot understand our drug war and Mexican immigration to the United States without reading this book. (Gustavo Arellano, syndicated columnist ¡Ask a Mexican!)
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