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Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic Paperback – April 5, 2016
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Winner of the NBCC Award for General Nonfiction
Named on 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.
- Print length400 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherBloomsbury Publishing
- Publication dateApril 5, 2016
- Dimensions5.55 x 1 x 8.2 inches
- ISBN-109781620402528
- ISBN-13978-1620402528
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"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.” ―San Francisco Chronicle Book Review
“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.” ―Los Angeles Times Book Review
“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, Booklist
“Quinones' research ensures that there is something legitimately interesting (and frequently horrifying) on every page. A-.” ―Entertainment Weekly
“[A] compelling examination . . . a driven and important narrative.” ―Wall Street Journal
“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.” ―Mother Jones
“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!
“Quinones is a veteran journalist and expert storyteller long steeped in the demi-monde of Mexican-American bordercrossings. Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic is an intricate jigsaw puzzle piecing together his findings from intensive investigation of the unprecedented spread of heroin addiction throughout the United States over the past two decades . . . Dreamland offers an eye-opening, enlightening and mesmerizing account of one of the most important stories of the last few decades . . . Quinones is a master storyteller, with a knack of bringing hundreds of characters to life . . . Dreamland stands as a model of meticulous investigative reporting providing important insights not only the current opiate epidemic but also into the sometimes negative symbiosis between our country and our neighbors to the south.” ―New York Journal of Books
"Quinones recounts individual tales--from junkies in Portland, Ore., to pill mills in Appalachia to entrepreneurial heroin traffickers from small-town Mexico--to describe a “catastrophic synergy” in which over-prescription of opioid painkillers begets addicts, many of whom then turn to heroin, which is cheaper and just as ubiquitous." ―Best Books of 2015, Boston Globe
“Unflinching . . . compellingly investigated.” ―Kirkus
"The path of heroin from America’s urban slums to its trim suburban subdivisions is traced by a Los Angeles Times reporter. Quinones’ deeply researched and readable book says well-heeled addicts got hooked first on pain-killing medications like OxyContin--but then switched to much cheaper Mexican heroin, feeding a problem across the nation." ―Best Books of 2015, St. Louis Dispatch
“Fascinating . . . a harrowing, eye-opening look at two sides of the same coin, the legal and illegal faces of addictive painkillers and their insidious power.” ―Publishers Weekly
“A haunting tale of opiate abuse in the heartland . . . Using expert storytelling and exhaustive detail, Quinones chronicles the perfect storm of circumstances that cleared the way for the Mexican narcotic to infiltrate our small and midsize communities over the last two decades.” ―Kansas City Star
“Fascinating.” ―Salon
"You won’t find this story told better anywhere else, from the economic hollowing-out of the middle class to the greedy and reckless marketing of pharmaceutical opiates to the remarkable entrepreneurial industry of the residents of the obscure Mexican state of Nayarit . . . Dreamland--true crime, sociology, and exposé--illuminates a catastrophe unfolding all around us, right now." ―Laura Miller’s 10 Favorite Books of 2015, Slate
"Dreamland is at once a heartbreaking narrative about the individuals in the grips of addiction, and a thorough history of how that addiction was made possible by a variety of key players. Featuring voices from every corner of the crisis, including pharmaceutical bigwigs, young Mexican drug runners, police, doctors, addicts, survivors, and families touched by epidemic, Dreamland is a must-read for anyone grappling with the story of heroin addiction in the United States." - Bustle
“The must-read book about America's heroin crisis . . . Quinones combines thorough research with superlative narrative skills to produce a horrifying but compulsively readable book about opiate addiction . . . a book that every American should read. And I state that without reservation . . . This book is as much of a page-turner as a good mystery, as well as being thoroughly and disturbingly illuminating about a national crisis.” ―Christian Science Monitor
“A gripping read and hard-hitting account of a ubiquitous plague that has flown under the radar.” ―Portland Business Journal
“Quinones's absorbing narrative is deep in research, on-site reporting, personal interviews and insight. Spanning the central U.S. and crossing the Mexican border, Dreamland adroitly unsnarls the tangled business that feeds a growing lust for chemical euphoria and relief.” ―Shelf Awareness
"Every so often I read a work of narrative nonfiction that makes me want to get up and preach: Read this true story! Such is Sam Quinones’ astonishing work of reporting and writing, Dreamland: the True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic." ―Seattle Times
“Everybody should read this book. Everybody.” ―Rod Dreher, The American Conservative
“An important frame of reference for understanding America’s opiate epidemic.” ―Portland Press Herald
"[A] powerful investigation into the explosion of heroin abuse in suburban America that combines skillful reporting and strong research with a superb narrative." ―The Spectator
"Compulsively readable." - A Doctor's Guide to Books, New York Times Book Review
About the Author
Product details
- ASIN : 1620402521
- Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing; Reprint edition (April 5, 2016)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 400 pages
- ISBN-10 : 9781620402528
- ISBN-13 : 978-1620402528
- Item Weight : 2.31 pounds
- Dimensions : 5.55 x 1 x 8.2 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #25,012 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #14 in Government Social Policy
- #23 in Sociological Study of Medicine
- #52 in Criminology (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Sam Quinones is a journalist, former LA Times reporter, author and storyteller.
His new book of narrative nonfiction - DREAMLAND: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic - was published in 2015 by Bloomsbury Press. It has received rave reviews from Salon.com, Christian Science Monitor, Kirkus Reviews, and a bunch of Amazon.com readers.
DREAMLAND recounts twin tales of drug marketing:
A pharmaceutical corporation flogs its legal new opiate painkiller as nonaddictive; immigrants from a small town in Nayarit, Mexico devise a method for retailing black-tar heroin like pizza and take that system nationwide riding a wave of pill addiction.
The result is our current scourge of opiate - pain pills and heroin - addiction.
A reporter for almost 30 years, Quinones lived and worked as a freelance writer in Mexico from 1994 to 2004. He spent time with gang members and governors, taco vendors and Los Tigres del Norte. He wrote about soap operas, and he lived briefly in a drug-rehabilitation clinic in Zamora, while hanging out with a street gang. He did the same with a colony of transvestites in Mazatlan, with the merchants in the Mexico City neighborhood of Tepito, and with the relegated PRI congressmen known as the Bronx. He hung out with the promoters of Tijuana's opera scene and with the makers of plaster statues of Mickey Mouse and Spiderman in that city's Colonia Libertad.
His previous two acclaimed books of narrative nonfiction about Mexico and Mexican immigration made him, according to the SF Chronicle Book Review, "the most original writer on Mexico and the border."
His first book -- True Tales From Another Mexico: The Lynch Mob, the Popsicle Kings, Chalino and the Bronx (Univ. of New Mexico Press, 2001) -- is a collection of nonfiction stories about contemporary Mexico.
His second -- Antonio's Gun and Delfino's Dream: True Tales of Mexican Migration (UNM Press, 2007) -- was called "genuinely original work, what great fiction and nonfiction aspire to be, these are the stories that stop time and remind us how great reading is." (S.F. Chronicle).
In 1998, he received a Alicia Patterson Fellowship, and Columbia University's Maria Moors Cabot Prize in 2008, for a career of excellence in reporting about Latin America.
He returned to the United States in 2004 to take a job with the LA Times, where for 10 years he wrote stories about immigrants, street gangs, drug trafficking, and marijuana growers in Northern California.
Contact him at www.samquinones.com
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In "Dreamland", Quinones magnificently blends together two seemingly-independent narratives: the overly generous prescription of pain medications during the 1990s (including Purdue Pharma's ambitious campaign to aggressively market and sell OxyContin) and the unforeseen—and unprecedented—arrival of cheap, consistent, high quality black tar heroin from one small county in Mexico. According to Quinones, these developments joined forces in a dangerous synergy that ultimately resulted in America's modern-day opiate epidemic.
The book opens with a ridiculously thorough timeline that begins with the distillation of morphine in 1804, moves on to the invention of the hypodermic syringe in 1853 (did you know that the inventor's wife was the first to die of injected drug overdose?), glances at the release of OxyContin in 1996, and ends with the FDA's 2014 approval of Targiniq ER, which combined timed-release oxycodone with naloxone. This timeline, which provides plenty of insight into what went on in between those four events, sets the stage for the book's narrative and successfully primes the reader for the information that follows.
And the actual book doesn't disappoint, either—as the dust-jacket blurb states, it introduces "a memorable cast of characters—pharma pioneers, young Mexican entrepreneurs, narcotics investigators, survivors, and parents, and Quinones shows how these tales fit together." Sure enough, about midway through "Dreamland", the reader begins to see the sophisticated web that was woven by several groups of people who were simply following the capitalist dream (operating in their own best interest in an attempt to make as much money as possible), and the once-hidden connections between the people and places involved become as clear as crystal.
When it comes down to it, "Dreamland" is the best book that I've read so far this year. The story is compelling and unfolds beautifully, in a masterful manner that constantly tempts the reader to read the next chapter. The level of detail that is crammed into each page is truly impressive, but never overwhelming. Simply put—I enjoyed every single word. The topic isn't necessarily the most popular (for the average reader), so I'm not sure that I would recommend this book to someone unless they're already interested in America's opiate epidemic. However, if you are at all intrigued by the topic, then I wholeheartedly recommend this book to you. It will likely take a while to read, because it is packed so densely, but it will be worth your investment of money, time, and energy. And I will keep an eye out for any future books and articles by Quinones, as his writing is an absolute joy to read.
Dreamland would be great as a work of fiction — intense, edgy, adrenalin-inducing — if it were only that. Unfortunately, it’s for real. Whether you blame the resilient Mexicans, the ad execs that turned the pharmaceutical industry into a money making machine, the use of the “pain index” as a fifth element in medical treatment, or a sagging American spirit that once fought for rugged individualism, but due to unemployment and loss of manufacturing jobs, among other things, now accepts the status quo like a prison inmate accepts lunch, you still come out in the same place: America likes its opioids more than it has liked any drug before, and throwing addicts in jail as a way to solve the problem is not going to work.
Quinones is the quintessential journalist, the type who goes in search of a story rather than one who sits behind a desk and waits for the internet to bring it to him. He spent years investigating the Xalisco Boys, researching, writing, following leads all the way to Mexico and back. It’s no surprise that Big Pharma comes out with egg on its face, having shoved the idea of pain as an indicator down physicians throats, sending forth wave after wave of sales team to rival an invasion and then promising to the moon and back that the oxycontin and oxycodone and other opioids were not addictive “if used properly” (what drug has ever been created that someone didn’t figure out how to use improperly?). Quinones doesn’t blame anyone, just shines a light, but Big Pharma knew, and even in the face of escalating deaths, it’s allowed the ruse to continue.
Once an addict, always an addict, just ask anyone who’s ever smoked cigarettes and tried to quit. To this day, I won’t touch one because, despite however much I may cough at first, if I make it through one, there’s a 50/50 chance I’d have another. I know the clarity that nicotine delivers to my brain is better than a pot of coffee and my brain, especially when I’m writing, gets a bit giddy just thinking about recreating that effect. And while addicts are addicted for different reasons, they generally can’t quit for the same one: the beast of desire is a hard one to tame. When a sports injury in high school leads to a life of addiction, and in case after case, death as Quinones describes in the book, then something is wrong with the system, not the child addled because of it.
Unfortunately, there’s no easy way forward and we’re not going to get out of it without talking — a lot — because counseling is key and so is patience. But, and it’s a big BUT, that means a groundswell of a shift toward listening, not just locking people up, and in order to listen we need to stop and take a breath, suspend our judgment, and give ourselves the space to hear. Is America ready to listen? Quinones hopes Dreamland will facilitate the conversation. Our kids’ futures depend upon it.