Methland
The Death and Life of an American Small Town
By Nick Reding
(Bloomsbury USA, Paperback, 9781608192076, 288pp.)
Publication Date: May 25, 2010
Other Editions of This Title: Google eBook, Hardcover
Categories: Criminology, Sociology - Rural, Substance Abuse & Addictions - Drug Dependence
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Selected by Indie Booksellers for the Winter 2011 Reading Group ListThe bestselling book that launched meth back into the nation's consciousness. Based on Reding's four years of reporting in the agricultural town of Oelwein, Iowa, and tracing the connections to the global forces that set the stage for the meth epidemic, Methland offers a vital perspective on a contemporary tragedy. It is a portrait of a community under siege, of the lives that meth has devastated, and of the heroes who continue to fight the war.
Nick Reding is the author of The Last Cowboys at the End of the World, and his writing has appeared in Outside, Food and Wine, and Harper's. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, he decided to move back to his home town in the course of reporting this book.
The Death and Life of an American Small Town: Meth is a drug with no celebrities, and Nick Reding treats his subjects with respect, despite close calls with former addicts who play disc golf with him one minute and threaten his life the next. But Methland's attempt to combine personal reflections on identity and place with an examination of the drug's role in a small town's economic struggles seems formally stale.
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