-
Methland
- The Death and Life of an American Small Town
- Narrated by: Mark Boyett
- Length: 9 hrs and 24 mins
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $20.72
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
The Least of Us
- By: Sam Quinones
- Narrated by: Tom Jordan
- Length: 12 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the New York Times best-selling 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.
-
-
Top tier journalism and 100% honest
- By Anonymous User on 11-24-21
By: Sam Quinones
-
Dreamland
- The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic
- By: Sam Quinones
- Narrated by: Tom Jordan
- Length: 14 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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 centre 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.
-
-
Excellent
- By Joe on 08-01-22
By: Sam Quinones
-
We All Fall Down
- Living with Addiction
- By: Nic Sheff
- Narrated by: Charles Carroll
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this powerful and immensely engaging follow-up to his first memoir, Sheff picks up where he left off and reveals his first-person account of stints at in-patient rehabilitation facilities, devastating relapses with alcohol and marijuana, and hard-won realizations about what it means to be a young adult living with addiction.
-
-
Disappointed
- By Lisa Saunders on 02-22-19
By: Nic Sheff
-
Raising Lazarus
- Hope, Justice, and the Future of America's Overdose Crisis
- By: Beth Macy
- Narrated by: Beth Macy
- Length: 10 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In her gripping, necessary, and deeply humane follow-up to the New York Times bestseller Dopesick, journalist Beth Macy brings us to the next frontier of the opioid crisis, telling the story of the everyday heroes fighting to stem the tide of drug overdose in communities that are too often left to fend for themselves, and of the activists and relatives of the dead who are still struggling for accountability in America’s courts. Like the treatment innovators she profiles, Beth Macy meets the opioid crisis where it is—not where we think it should be or wish it was.
-
-
Uncomfortable Truth—the best kind!
- By Anna on 09-01-22
By: Beth Macy
-
Narconomics
- How to Run a Drug Cartel
- By: Tom Wainwright
- Narrated by: Brian Hutchison
- Length: 8 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What drug lords learned from big business. How does a budding cartel boss succeed (and survive) in the $300 billion illegal drug business? By learning from the best, of course. From creating brand value to fine-tuning customer service, the folks running cartels have been attentive students of the strategy and tactics used by corporations such as Walmart, McDonald's, and Coca-Cola.
-
-
Worthy book in the "economics explains X" genre
- By A reader on 04-11-16
By: Tom Wainwright
-
American Overdose
- The Opioid Tragedy in Three Acts
- By: Chris McGreal
- Narrated by: Dan Woren
- Length: 11 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The opioid epidemic has been described as "one of the greatest mistakes of modern medicine." But calling it a mistake is a generous rewriting of the history of greed, corruption, and indifference that pushed the US into consuming more than 80 percent of the world's opioid painkillers. Journeying through lives and communities wrecked by the epidemic, Chris McGreal reveals not only how Big Pharma hooked Americans on powerfully addictive drugs but the corrupting of medicine and public institutions that let the opioid makers get away with it.
-
-
An important read
- By Macmom4 on 02-18-19
By: Chris McGreal
-
The Least of Us
- By: Sam Quinones
- Narrated by: Tom Jordan
- Length: 12 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the New York Times best-selling 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.
-
-
Top tier journalism and 100% honest
- By Anonymous User on 11-24-21
By: Sam Quinones
-
Dreamland
- The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic
- By: Sam Quinones
- Narrated by: Tom Jordan
- Length: 14 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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 centre 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.
-
-
Excellent
- By Joe on 08-01-22
By: Sam Quinones
-
We All Fall Down
- Living with Addiction
- By: Nic Sheff
- Narrated by: Charles Carroll
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this powerful and immensely engaging follow-up to his first memoir, Sheff picks up where he left off and reveals his first-person account of stints at in-patient rehabilitation facilities, devastating relapses with alcohol and marijuana, and hard-won realizations about what it means to be a young adult living with addiction.
-
-
Disappointed
- By Lisa Saunders on 02-22-19
By: Nic Sheff
-
Raising Lazarus
- Hope, Justice, and the Future of America's Overdose Crisis
- By: Beth Macy
- Narrated by: Beth Macy
- Length: 10 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In her gripping, necessary, and deeply humane follow-up to the New York Times bestseller Dopesick, journalist Beth Macy brings us to the next frontier of the opioid crisis, telling the story of the everyday heroes fighting to stem the tide of drug overdose in communities that are too often left to fend for themselves, and of the activists and relatives of the dead who are still struggling for accountability in America’s courts. Like the treatment innovators she profiles, Beth Macy meets the opioid crisis where it is—not where we think it should be or wish it was.
-
-
Uncomfortable Truth—the best kind!
- By Anna on 09-01-22
By: Beth Macy
-
Narconomics
- How to Run a Drug Cartel
- By: Tom Wainwright
- Narrated by: Brian Hutchison
- Length: 8 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What drug lords learned from big business. How does a budding cartel boss succeed (and survive) in the $300 billion illegal drug business? By learning from the best, of course. From creating brand value to fine-tuning customer service, the folks running cartels have been attentive students of the strategy and tactics used by corporations such as Walmart, McDonald's, and Coca-Cola.
-
-
Worthy book in the "economics explains X" genre
- By A reader on 04-11-16
By: Tom Wainwright
-
American Overdose
- The Opioid Tragedy in Three Acts
- By: Chris McGreal
- Narrated by: Dan Woren
- Length: 11 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The opioid epidemic has been described as "one of the greatest mistakes of modern medicine." But calling it a mistake is a generous rewriting of the history of greed, corruption, and indifference that pushed the US into consuming more than 80 percent of the world's opioid painkillers. Journeying through lives and communities wrecked by the epidemic, Chris McGreal reveals not only how Big Pharma hooked Americans on powerfully addictive drugs but the corrupting of medicine and public institutions that let the opioid makers get away with it.
-
-
An important read
- By Macmom4 on 02-18-19
By: Chris McGreal
-
The Alchemy of Meth
- A Decomposition
- By: Jason Pine
- Narrated by: Jason Pine
- Length: 4 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Meth alchemists all over the United States tap the occulted potencies of industrial chemical and big pharma products to try to cure the ills of precarious living: underemployment, insecurity, and the feeling of idleness. Meth fires up your attention and makes repetitive tasks pleasurable, whether it’s factory work or tinkering at home. Users are awake for days and feel exuberant and invincible. In one person’s words, they “get more life”.
-
-
Highly recommended and unexpectedly enlightening.
- By Francisco lara on 09-18-22
By: Jason Pine
-
The Fifth Vital
- By: Mike Majlak, Riley J. Ford
- Narrated by: Mike Majlak
- Length: 7 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Mike Majlak was a 17-year-old from a loving middle-class family in Milford, Connecticut, when he got caught up in the opioid epidemic that swept the nation. For close to a decade thereafter, his life was a wasteland of darkness and despair. While his peers were graduating from college, buying homes, getting married, having kids, and leading normal lives, Mike was snorting Oxycontin, climbing out of cars at gunpoint, and burying his childhood friends.
-
-
Book is straight fire
- By Amazon Customer on 03-04-21
By: Mike Majlak, and others
-
My Fair Junkie
- A Memoir of Getting Dirty and Staying Clean
- By: Amy Dresner
- Narrated by: Amy Dresner
- Length: 7 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the tradition of Orange Is the New Black and Jerry Stahl's Permanent Midnight, Amy Dresner's My Fair Junkie is an insightful, darkly funny, and shamelessly honest memoir of one woman's battle with all forms of addiction, hitting rock bottom, and forging a path to a life worth living.
-
-
if you don't read this I'll brandish a bread knife
- By Jackie Lange on 03-02-18
By: Amy Dresner
-
That's What Junkies Do
- By: Thomas Figlioli
- Narrated by: Shanon Weaver
- Length: 7 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
That's What Junkies Do is a brutally honest, often dark journey of one man's struggle with alcoholism and drug addiction. The story starts innocently enough in 1980's Brooklyn, NY, with a young boy, Thomas Figlioli, making a bad choice so he could gain the respect of a group of kids he looked up to and admired. Alcohol gives him the courage to be the person he always wanted to be. His fear and insecurity leaves and his lifelong struggle begins. When thoughts of ending it all become a better choice than living how he is, Thomas finally asks for help.
-
-
The honesty and story gripped me right from the beginning and never let go.
- By JOHN GERMIN on 09-08-21
By: Thomas Figlioli
-
Broken
- My Story of Addiction and Redemption
- By: William Cope Moyers, Katherine Ketcham
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 13 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Broken, William Cope Moyers tells the story of a love affair with alcohol and crack cocaine that led him to the brink of death over and over again. A harrowing account, it paints a picture of a young man with every advantage who found himself spiraling into a dark abyss. Battling shame and self-doubt at every turn, the author finally emerges into the clear light of recovery as he dedicates his life to changing the politics of addiction.
-
-
AGONIZING arrogance, entitlement, self promotion
- By karen McCann on 03-14-19
By: William Cope Moyers, and others
-
American Pain
- How a Young Felon and His Ring of Doctors Unleashed America's Deadliest Drug Epidemic
- By: John Temple
- Narrated by: Charlie Thurston
- Length: 10 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
American Pain chronicles the rise and fall of this game-changing pill mill and how it helped tip the nation into its current opioid crisis. The narrative, which swings back and forth between Florida and Kentucky, is populated by a diverse cast of characters.
-
-
Now I understand the problem
- By Amazon Customer in Sanford NC on 07-07-16
By: John Temple
-
The Streets of Baltimore
- The Shocking Addiction Memoir of Brandon Novak
- By: Joe Frantz
- Narrated by: Brandon Novak
- Length: 6 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Brandon Novak, an actor known for the films Jackass and Viva La Bam, among others, was a teenage skateboarder, but his lust for heroin led to a junkie’s destiny on the streets of Baltimore. Arrests, rehabs, and drug-tortured love triangles consumed Novak’s life, until his childhood friend and Jackass alumnus Bam Margera guided him to MTV fame. But Novak’s stardom led him down a self-destructive path that forced him to sculpt his future.
-
-
So good!
- By OA on 07-17-24
By: Joe Frantz
-
Fall of Giants
- Book One of the Century Trilogy
- By: Ken Follett
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 30 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ken Follett's World Without End was a global phenomenon, a work of grand historical sweep beloved by millions of readers and acclaimed by critics. Fall of Giants is his magnificent new historical epic. The first novel in The Century Trilogy, it follows the fates of five interrelated families - American, German, Russian, English, and Welsh - as they move through the world-shaking dramas of the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and the struggle for women's suffrage.
-
-
Loved it and learned alot.
- By Louis on 10-19-10
By: Ken Follett
-
Strung Out
- One Last Hit and Other Lies That Nearly Killed Me
- By: Erin Khar
- Narrated by: Jayme Mattler
- Length: 10 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This deeply personal and illuminating memoir about her 15-year struggle with heroin, Khar sheds profound light on the opioid crisis and gives a voice to the over two million people in America currently battling with this addiction. Growing up in LA, Erin Khar hid behind a picture-perfect childhood filled with excellent grades, a popular group of friends and horseback riding. After first experimenting with her grandmother’s expired painkillers, Khar started using heroin when she was thirteen.
-
-
Surface material
- By blythe mayfield on 03-06-20
By: Erin Khar
-
Permanent Midnight
- A Memoir (20th Anniversary Edition)
- By: Jerry Stahl, Nic Sheff - foreword
- Narrated by: Jerry Stahl, Scott Merriman
- Length: 11 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A searing confessional infused with the darkest humor, Permanent Midnight chronicles the opiated abyss of a Hollywood screenwriter and his formidable climb into sobriety. Made into a major motion picture starring Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson, Permanent Midnight is revered by critics and an ever-growing cult of devoted fans as one of the most compelling contemporary memoirs.
-
-
Point deduction for the recording
- By Amazon Customer on 11-21-20
By: Jerry Stahl, and others
-
The Corner
- A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood
- By: David Simon, Edward Burns
- Narrated by: Dion Graham, David Simon
- Length: 25 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The crime-infested intersection of West Fayette and Monroe Streets is well-known - and cautiously avoided - by most of Baltimore. But this notorious corner's 24-hour open-air drug market provides the economic fuel for a dying neighborhood. David Simon, an award-winning author and crime reporter, and Edward Burns, a 20-year veteran of the urban drug war, tell the chilling story of this desolate crossroad.
-
-
Insightful. A Must Read For Suburban Americans.
- By WitchCrafter on 06-01-21
By: David Simon, and others
-
Beautiful Boy
- A Father's Journey through His Son's Meth Addiction
- By: David Sheff
- Narrated by: Anthony Heald
- Length: 11 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
David Sheff's story is a first: a teenager's addiction from the parent's point of view, a real-time chronicle of the shocking descent into substance abuse and the gradual emergence into hope.
Before meth, Sheff's son, Nic, was a varsity athlete, honor student, and award-winning journalist. After meth, he was a trembling wraith who stole money from his eight-year-old brother and lived on the streets. With haunting candor, Sheff traces the first warning signs, the attempts at rehabilitation, and, at last, the way past addiction. He shows us that, whatever an addict's fate, the rest of the family must care for one another, too, lest they become addicted to addiction.
-
-
Been There
- By Happy Reader on 11-26-12
By: David Sheff
Editorial reviews
There is something about Mark Boyett’s voice that made him the narrator of choice for two nonfiction audiobooks published in close succession: The Good Soldiers by David Finkel and Methland by Nick Reding. The common factors of these books are authors who worked at the sites of their stories for protracted periods of time and developed personal relationships with the people caught in the terrible circumstances their stories depict, and the important issues for America the books represent. The Good Soldiers is a deeply moving, tragic, and heroic story of American soldiers fighting in Iraq. Methland is an American tragedy of engulfing, systemic, and tragic dimensions. Set in Oelwein, Iowa, Methland documents the destructive effects of methamphetamine on this small town, and, by extension, all of rural America and the rest of the country.
Boyett is an actor relatively new to audiobooks. His talents and skills are exceptional, and his voice has unique and impressive signature qualities. Boyett’s narrative voice ranges from a baritone of dramatic tonal solidity to the mid-to-high registries where he is expansive in more nuanced ways. Boyett has exceptional timing. And what is perhaps his strongest talent is the way he creates and shapes the book’s timing with his frequent and fluent shifts in intonation, stress, phrasings, emphases, and pitch — all the vocal gifts in the narrator’s quiver. In short, Boyett’s voice is actively expressive in quite an impressive way, and what is behind the voice is the narrator’s highly disciplined and methodical approach. Boyett does what the great narrators do: he greatly enhances and enriches the book’s contents.
Methland is a book of extreme contrasts. In its largest sense it is investigative journalism, objective reportage of the history and growth and destructive effects of methamphetamine. It is upfront and personal in its depictions of the people involved in the drama, and in many places it is down-home and personal. For instance, we become closely acquainted with the life stories of two upstanding and impressive young men central to the story: Nathan Lein, assistant prosecutor for Fayette County, and Clay Hallberg, the town’s doctor.
And then there is Roland Jarvis. “On a cold winter night in 2001, Roland Jarvis looked out the window of his mother’s house and saw that the Oelwein police had hung live human heads in the trees of the yard… Then the heads, satisfied that Jarvis was in fact cooking meth in the basement, conveyed the message to a black helicopter hovering over the house.” This hallucination has horrific, dreadful consequences, and Reding’s depictions of Jarvis living with these consequences are shocking, startling, and moving. The something about Boyett’s voice is his meticulously timed and constructed narration, his expressive fluency, and his ability to shift with ease within the existential extremes of normality and abnormality in nonfiction. — David Chasey
Publisher's summary
The dramatic story of the methamphetamine epidemic as it sweeps the American heartland a timely, moving, very human account of one community s attempt to battle its way to a brighter future.
Crystal methamphetamine is widely considered to be the most dangerous drug in the world, and nowhere is that more true than in the small towns of the American heartland. Methland tells the story of Oelwein, Iowa (pop. 6,159), which, like thousands of other small towns across the country, has been left in the dust by the consolidation of the agricultural industry, a depressed local economy, and an out-migration of people. As if this weren't enough to deal with, an incredibly cheap, long lasting, and highly addictive drug has rolled into town.
Over a period of four years, journalist Nick Reding brings us into the heart of Oelwein through a cast of intimately drawn characters, including: Clay Hallburg, the town doctor, who fights meth even as he struggles with his own alcoholism; Nathan Lein, the town prosecutor, whose caseload is filled almost exclusively with meth-related crime; and Jeff Rohrick, a meth addict, still trying to kick the habit after 20 years. Tracing the connections between the lives touched by the drug and the global forces that set the stage for the epidemic, Methland offers a vital and unique perspective on a pressing contemporary tragedy.
Critic reviews
Related to this topic
-
Humboldt
- Life on America's Marijuana Frontier
- By: Emily Brady
- Narrated by: Dan Woren, Sonny Warner, Erin Bennett, and others
- Length: 7 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the vein of Susan Orlean's The Orchid Thief and Deborah Feldman's Unorthodox, journalist Emily Brady journeys into a secretive subculture - one that marijuana built. Say the words "Humboldt County" to a stranger and you might receive a knowing grin. The name is infamous, and yet the place, and its inhabitants, have been nearly impenetrable. Until now. Humboldt is a narrative exploration of an insular community in Northern California, which for nearly 40 years has existed primarily on the cultivation and sale of marijuana.
-
-
Great book!
- By David on 02-26-15
By: Emily Brady
-
Strange Stones
- By: Peter Hessler
- Narrated by: George Backman
- Length: 13 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Full of unforgettable figures and an unrelenting spirit of adventure, Strange Stones is a far-ranging, thought-provoking collection of Peter Hessler’s best reportage - a dazzling display of the powerful storytelling, shrewd cultural insight, and warm sense of humor that are the trademarks of his work. Over the last decade, as a staff writer for The New Yorker and the author of three books, Peter Hessler has lived in Asia and the United States, writing as both native and knowledgeable outsider in these two very different regions.
-
-
funny, entertaining
- By Katherine on 08-02-13
By: Peter Hessler
-
Rez Life
- An Indian's Journey Through Reservation Life
- By: David Treuer
- Narrated by: Peter Berkrot
- Length: 10 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Celebrated novelist David Treuer has gained a reputation for writing fiction that expands the horizons of Native American literature. In Rez Life, his first full-length work of nonfiction, Treuer brings a novelist's storytelling skill and an eye for detail to a complex and subtle examination of Native American reservation life, past and present. With authoritative research and reportage, Treuer illuminates misunderstood contemporary issues of sovereignty, treaty rights, and natural-resource conservation.
-
-
Rez Life needs a Rez voice not a Suyapi narrator..
- By Deaxkaash on 09-11-13
By: David Treuer
-
Boom, Bust, Exodus
- The Rust Belt, the Maquilas, and a Tale of Two Cities
- By: Chad Broughton
- Narrated by: Stephen McLaughlin
- Length: 15 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 2002, the town of Galesburg, a slowly declining Rustbelt city of 33,000 in western Illinois, learned that it would soon lose its largest factory, a Maytag refrigerator plant that had anchored Galesburg's social and economic life for decades. Workers at the plant earned $15.14 an hour, had good insurance, and were assured a solid retirement. In 2004, the plant was relocated to Reynosa, Mexico, where workers sometimes spent 13-hour days assembling refrigerators for $1.10 an hour.
-
-
A Story I thought I Knew
- By Meek84 on 07-08-18
By: Chad Broughton
-
West of the West
- Dreamers, Believers, Builders, and Killers in the Golden State
- By: Mark Arax
- Narrated by: Mark Arax
- Length: 13 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Teddy Roosevelt once exclaimed, "When I am in California, I am not in the West. I am west of the West", and in this book, Mark Arax spends four years travelling up and down the Golden State to explore its singular place in the world. This is California beyond the clichés. This is California as only a native son, deep in the dust, could draw it.
By: Mark Arax
-
Glass House
- The 1% Economy and the Shattering of the All-American Town
- By: Brian Alexander
- Narrated by: Bob Souer
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Anchor Hocking Glass Company, once the world's largest maker of glass tableware, was the base on which Lancaster's society was built. As Glass House unfolds, bankruptcy looms. With access to the company and its leaders, and Lancaster's citizens, Alexander shows how financial engineering took hold in the 1980s, accelerated in the 21st century, and wrecked the company.
-
-
What really happened to the American Dream?
- By Bill on 05-10-17
By: Brian Alexander
-
Humboldt
- Life on America's Marijuana Frontier
- By: Emily Brady
- Narrated by: Dan Woren, Sonny Warner, Erin Bennett, and others
- Length: 7 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the vein of Susan Orlean's The Orchid Thief and Deborah Feldman's Unorthodox, journalist Emily Brady journeys into a secretive subculture - one that marijuana built. Say the words "Humboldt County" to a stranger and you might receive a knowing grin. The name is infamous, and yet the place, and its inhabitants, have been nearly impenetrable. Until now. Humboldt is a narrative exploration of an insular community in Northern California, which for nearly 40 years has existed primarily on the cultivation and sale of marijuana.
-
-
Great book!
- By David on 02-26-15
By: Emily Brady
-
Strange Stones
- By: Peter Hessler
- Narrated by: George Backman
- Length: 13 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Full of unforgettable figures and an unrelenting spirit of adventure, Strange Stones is a far-ranging, thought-provoking collection of Peter Hessler’s best reportage - a dazzling display of the powerful storytelling, shrewd cultural insight, and warm sense of humor that are the trademarks of his work. Over the last decade, as a staff writer for The New Yorker and the author of three books, Peter Hessler has lived in Asia and the United States, writing as both native and knowledgeable outsider in these two very different regions.
-
-
funny, entertaining
- By Katherine on 08-02-13
By: Peter Hessler
-
Rez Life
- An Indian's Journey Through Reservation Life
- By: David Treuer
- Narrated by: Peter Berkrot
- Length: 10 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Celebrated novelist David Treuer has gained a reputation for writing fiction that expands the horizons of Native American literature. In Rez Life, his first full-length work of nonfiction, Treuer brings a novelist's storytelling skill and an eye for detail to a complex and subtle examination of Native American reservation life, past and present. With authoritative research and reportage, Treuer illuminates misunderstood contemporary issues of sovereignty, treaty rights, and natural-resource conservation.
-
-
Rez Life needs a Rez voice not a Suyapi narrator..
- By Deaxkaash on 09-11-13
By: David Treuer
-
Boom, Bust, Exodus
- The Rust Belt, the Maquilas, and a Tale of Two Cities
- By: Chad Broughton
- Narrated by: Stephen McLaughlin
- Length: 15 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 2002, the town of Galesburg, a slowly declining Rustbelt city of 33,000 in western Illinois, learned that it would soon lose its largest factory, a Maytag refrigerator plant that had anchored Galesburg's social and economic life for decades. Workers at the plant earned $15.14 an hour, had good insurance, and were assured a solid retirement. In 2004, the plant was relocated to Reynosa, Mexico, where workers sometimes spent 13-hour days assembling refrigerators for $1.10 an hour.
-
-
A Story I thought I Knew
- By Meek84 on 07-08-18
By: Chad Broughton
-
West of the West
- Dreamers, Believers, Builders, and Killers in the Golden State
- By: Mark Arax
- Narrated by: Mark Arax
- Length: 13 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Teddy Roosevelt once exclaimed, "When I am in California, I am not in the West. I am west of the West", and in this book, Mark Arax spends four years travelling up and down the Golden State to explore its singular place in the world. This is California beyond the clichés. This is California as only a native son, deep in the dust, could draw it.
By: Mark Arax
-
Glass House
- The 1% Economy and the Shattering of the All-American Town
- By: Brian Alexander
- Narrated by: Bob Souer
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Anchor Hocking Glass Company, once the world's largest maker of glass tableware, was the base on which Lancaster's society was built. As Glass House unfolds, bankruptcy looms. With access to the company and its leaders, and Lancaster's citizens, Alexander shows how financial engineering took hold in the 1980s, accelerated in the 21st century, and wrecked the company.
-
-
What really happened to the American Dream?
- By Bill on 05-10-17
By: Brian Alexander
-
The Boys in the Bunkhouse
- Servitude and Salvation in the Heartland
- By: Dan Barry
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 9 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the tiny Iowa farm town of Atalissa, dozens of men, all with intellectual disabilities and all from Texas, lived in an old schoolhouse. Before dawn each morning, they were bussed to a nearby processing plant, where they eviscerated turkeys in return for food, lodging, and $65 a month. They lived in near servitude for more than 30 years, enduring increasing neglect, exploitation, and physical and emotional abuse.
-
-
Our Brothers' Keepers?
- By Gillian on 12-01-16
By: Dan Barry
-
The Unwinding
- An Inner History of the New America
- By: George Packer
- Narrated by: Robert Fass
- Length: 18 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The Unwinding, George Packer, author of The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq, tells the story of the United States over the past three decades in an utterly original way, with his characteristically sharp eye for detail and gift for weaving together complex narratives. The Unwinding portrays a superpower in danger of coming apart at the seams, its elites no longer elite, its institutions no longer working, its ordinary people left to improvise their own schemes for success and salvation.
-
-
Can't understand the low ratings!
- By Janet Pittman Henley on 05-27-13
By: George Packer
-
Strangers in Their Own Land
- Anger and Mourning on the American Right
- By: Arlie Russell Hochschild
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 11 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Strangers in Their Own Land, the renowned sociologist Arlie Hochschild embarks on a thought-provoking journey from her liberal hometown of Berkeley, California, deep into Louisiana bayou country - a stronghold of the conservative right. As she gets to know people who strongly oppose many of the ideas she famously champions, Hochschild nevertheless finds common ground and quickly warms to the people she meets.
-
-
Performance undercuts thesis
- By married, one tall dog, one smelly dog on 01-02-17
-
Country Driving
- A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory
- By: Peter Hessler
- Narrated by: Peter Berkrot
- Length: 16 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the summer of 2001, Peter Hessler, the longtime Beijing correspondent for The New Yorker, acquired his Chinese driver's license. For the next seven years, he traveled the country, tracking how the automobile and improved roads were transforming China.
-
-
Pass the white rice please
- By Nick on 02-18-10
By: Peter Hessler
-
Full Body Burden
- Growing Up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats
- By: Kristen Iversen
- Narrated by: Kirsten Potter, Kristen Iversen
- Length: 13 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Kristen Iversen grew up in a small Colorado town close to Rocky Flats, a secret nuclear weapons plant once designated "the most contaminated site in America." Full Body Burden is the story of a childhood and adolescence in the shadow of the Cold War, in a landscape at once startlingly beautiful and--unknown to those who lived there--tainted with invisible yet deadly particles of plutonium.
-
-
A story that no one else wanted to tell.
- By Carol on 01-28-13
By: Kristen Iversen
-
The Chain
- Farm, Factory, and the Fate of Our Food
- By: Ted Genoways
- Narrated by: Michael Kramer
- Length: 8 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Interviewing scores of line workers, union leaders, hog farmers, and local politicians and activists, Genoways reveals an industry pushed to its breaking point. Along the way, he exposes alarming new trends: sick or permanently disabled workers, abused animals, water and soil pollution, and mounting conflict between small towns and immigrant labor.
-
-
Great Writing, Performance and Content
- By Kevin S. Grail on 09-29-19
By: Ted Genoways
-
Where I Was From
- By: Joan Didion
- Narrated by: Gabrielle De Cuir
- Length: 6 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In her moving and insightful new book, Joan Didion reassesses parts of her life, her work, her history and ours. A native Californian, Didion applies her scalpel-like intelligence to the state’s ethic of ruthless self-sufficiency in order to examine that ethic’s often tenuous relationship to reality. Combining history and reportage, memoir and literary criticism, Where I Was From explores California’s romances with land and water; its unacknowledged debts to railroads, aerospace, and big government; the disjunction between its code of individualism and its fetish for prisons.
-
-
California belongs to Joan Didion.
- By Darwin8u on 11-04-15
By: Joan Didion
-
The King of California
- J.G. Boswell and the Making of a Secret American Empire
- By: Mark Arax, Rick Wartzman
- Narrated by: James Patrick Cronin
- Length: 19 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
J. G. Boswell was the biggest farmer in America. He built a secret empire while thumbing his nose at nature, politicians, labor unions, and every journalist who ever tried to lift the veil on the ultimate "factory in the fields". The King of California is the previously untold account of how a Georgia slave-owning family migrated to California in the early 1920s, drained one of America 's biggest lakes in an act of incredible hubris and carved out the richest cotton empire in the world.
-
-
Interesting story of California Ag history
- By Jean on 08-11-14
By: Mark Arax, and others
-
Fast Food Nation
- The Dark Side of the All-American Meal
- By: Eric Schlosser
- Narrated by: Rick Adamson
- Length: 8 hrs and 56 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
To a degree both engrossing and alarming, the story of fast food is the story of postwar America. Fast Food Nation is a groundbreaking work of investigation and cultural history that may change the way America thinks about the way it eats.
-
-
Uncritical alarmist rant
- By Mark Freeman on 12-23-03
By: Eric Schlosser
-
Breaking Blue
- By: Timothy Egan
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 9 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1935, the Spokane police regularly extorted sex, food, and money from the reluctant hobos (many of them displaced farmers who had fled the midwestern dust bowls), robbed dairies, and engaged in all manner of nefarious crimes, including murder. This history was suppressed until 1989, when former logger, Vietnam vet, and Spokane cop Tony Bamonte discovered a strange 1955 deathbed confession while researching a thesis on local law enforcement history.
-
-
Excellent! Highly Recommended.
- By R. Smith on 02-25-17
By: Timothy Egan
-
High-Risers
- Cabrini-Green and the Fate of American Public Housing
- By: Ben Austen
- Narrated by: Ron Butler
- Length: 13 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Built in the 1940s atop an infamous Italian slum, Cabrini-Green grew to 23 towers and a population of 20,000 - all of it packed onto just 70 acres a few blocks from Chicago's ritzy Gold Coast. Cabrini-Green became synonymous with crime, squalor, and the failure of government. For the many who lived there, it was also a much-needed resource - it was home. By 2011, every high-rise had been razed, the island of black poverty engulfed by the white affluence around it, the families dispersed.
-
-
Little mention of accountability of the people getting the housing
- By Steve D Renz on 05-15-18
By: Ben Austen
-
Chasing the White Dog
- An Amateur Outlaw's Adventures in the Moonshine Capital of the World
- By: Max Watman
- Narrated by: Max Watman
- Length: 9 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Chasing the White Dog, journalist Max Watman traces the historical roots and contemporary story of hooch. He takes us to the backwoods of Appalachia and the gritty nip joints of Philadelphia, from a federal courthouse to Pocono Speedway, profiling the colorful characters who make up white whiskey's lore. Along the way, Watman chronicles his hilarious attempts to distill his own moonshine - the essential ingredients and the many ways it can all go wrong - from his initial ill-fated batch to his first successful jar of 'shine.
-
-
Wonderfully written and narrated, poorly recorded.
- By Cameron on 04-18-16
By: Max Watman
What listeners say about Methland
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Jon M. Wilson
- 08-06-12
Interesting Perspective, Although A Bit Biased
This is a very interesting perspective on the "Meth Epidemic"-- giving a fuller picture than is typically found in the mass media. However, the author definitely has a bias and an opinion about this phenomena, and I am not sure I buy it 100%.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
- Veronica
- 08-02-10
Compelling & terrifying
For someone who was "familiar with the drug scene" meth is and was a truly scary drug. What this substance does to people and communities is terrible but this book goes FAR beyond the obvious. The effects of government policy and blatant corporate irresponsibility do damage individuals and the author does an excellent job of making connections. I could not stop listening to this (much to the annoyance of my family). Don't miss this one!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
8 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
- Guillermo
- 06-18-10
Enjoyable Ramble
I enjoyed listening to this tale. Last year I actually took a train to some of the towns mentioned in this story (towns so rural my gps listed 15 of the top 25 points of interest as cemetaries). The narration was perfect, and I estimate that 85% of the writing was perfect, too. But approximately 15% of it digressed pointlessly, and that's why I only give this 4 out of 5 stars. Still, the tale was entertaining and sometimes educational.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
6 people found this helpful
-
Overall
- Regina
- 06-23-10
Methland, USA
Solid reporting, good storytelling, wide lens to this narrative. It's really a contemporary history of Middle American working class: blue collar without a reason to get dressed for work. Excellent on the larger forces in play, why the American myth is psychological rather than sociological, meaning, whatever happens, we see only personal responsibility.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
6 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Joshua Kim
- 06-10-12
Breaking Good
Methland should be read as a companion piece to Caught in the Middle: America's Heartland in the Age of Globalism - the micro results of the macro trends that have decimated once thriving agricultural and manufacturing towns in the midwest. As Reding tells the story, meth is a symptom of a larger economic and social story rather than a cause.
True, meth addiction and the meth economy feeds the beast of social decline and dysfunction, but the roots of meth's rise as the working class drug of choice, and the states inability to deal with either the producers or the addicts is structural. Reding's reporting strategy is personal and visual. We meet the people on all sides of the meth epidemic as full drawn and realized personalities. Anyone who reads Methland will have a hard time thinking about crystal addiction, manufacture or distribution as one only of personal failure.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
3 people found this helpful
-
Overall
- Anonymous User
- 07-15-10
methland
My hats off to Nick Reding. Very well researched book. It's about time somebody wrote the truth about a drug that has took the USA like a plague! Any more its not who's on this horrible drug,but who is'nt.Meth is destroying lives and family's daily! Sure wish their were more real people like Nick out their! Great job, keep up the good work,hope to see more of your writings in the future. This novel really hit's HOME!!!!!!!!!!!!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
3 people found this helpful
-
Overall
- Cindy
- 08-10-10
Riveting and enlightening
I had a good friend who had a very bad reaction to methamphetamine diet pills prescribed for her by her doctor in the late 60s and everyone thought she had a nervous breakdown, while she kept telling us it was the diet pills. It wasn't until she found a newspaper article some years later about meth that anyone thought she might have been on to something. At any rate, she was never the same person, and this book brings that change in brain chemistry to the forefront.
I remember a lot of facts from the 60s and 70s of the government's involvement in regulating meth but listening to this book really put it all together for me! Every "Ah-hah!" moment led to another and I couldn't leave the book alone until it was finished.
I think this book should be required reading because not only does it make a good case about the possible role of meth in everyday lives, but it also opens our eyes to the extent of the hold of addictive substances.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
- Hamish
- 10-27-10
Loved the beginning but it got bogged
I found the first few chapters of this book fascinating but then it seemed to get bogged, or rather distracted and almost off topic, I struggled to get through it towards the end. Still interesting but I would have preferred more investigation of the actual addicts rather than some of the very ordinary commentary.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- jveeg
- 04-10-18
Interesting facts, boring storyline
Interesting facts, boring storyline. I had high hopes for loving this book but it 85% of it was just soo boring
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
- Anna
- 10-19-10
baker
Feels lazy at times and over-reaching. It tries too hard. Meth is bad. Meth is here to stay, but books have a responsibility to tell stories in engaging ways-- at least a book of this type.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
2 people found this helpful