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The Least of Us: True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth
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50/99
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83/99
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84/99
Volume
90/99
Rating
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About This Book
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 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 .
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Reviews
"Vivid character profiles of drug runners and abusers, their family members, and social workers and addiction treatment counselors make the scale of the tragedy clear, while providing persuasive evidence that the battle against the opioid crisis can be won ..."
"Quinones has done a marvelous job of cobbling together individual stories to give us a sense of how the systemic failures fall—hard—on individuals."
"Regardless, readers looking for the latest take on the drug trade and recovery as well as those who flock to well written journalism will dig into this."
"Several longer stories offer an in-depth account of situations but are told in interspersed instalments that are hard to follow."
"Quinones once again dives deep into America's drug culture, but this time he takes his investigation a step further to shine light on the ways that communities are coming together to fight addiction ..."
"A valuable but overlong overview of an underappreciated drug crisis."
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