The Least of Us

By: Sam Quinones

Narrated by: Tom Jordan

Length: 12 hrs and 49 mins

Publisher's summary

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.

Sam Quinones traveled from Mexico to main streets across the US 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 ahead: 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' award-winning Dreamland.

©2021 Sam Quinones (P)2021 Audible, Inc.

LOVE THIS

This book is AMAZING!! highly recommended for anyone working or around addiction. The reader is so soothing as well

Heartbreaking

Sam Quinones book helped me to understand addiction, how fentanyl invaded street drugs and how meth has become king. As the mother of an addicted, homeless adult child, it infuriates me that so many lives have been destroyed by capitalistic greed.

Fascinating book

Quinones weaves together a compelling tapestry of discrete tales that on their own could carry an entire novel. All together they capture the profound problems and potential solutions in our country with a clarity and breadth that is lacking in other reporting. I see the world differently now and who deserves or empathy and our scorn.

Survival & Redemption

Going to recommend this book to my loved ones. It explains so much of what many of us can’t see.

Fascinating

I was not too keen on the narration but the story was so compelling that I got over it. Fascinating insight into the horrors of capitalism and the widespread implications to the lives impacted. There was one part I did not like when the author spoke of the Marshall Plan as an economic gift, without mentioning it was a political gesture (2 halves of the same walnut) to eradicate conditions which breed communism. Otherwise, very insightful, compelling and yes, full of hope for those who are supported in their recovery.

Top tier journalism and 100% honest

I am a cop and this maps 1:1 onto my experiences with people addicted to meth. This book needs to blow up!

Chapters are out of order, but a brilliant book

He should have a Pulitzer. I liked the reader, too. Nice voice. But the lack of order was irritating.

Intensely educational

Phenomenal loads of statistics and powerful stories are told in the book. The topics aren't easy but are so very important to learn about. Definitely read this.

The Crumbling of America

A straightforward accounting of where this country is in the addiction crisis. Capitalism and greed have created a population of addicts for profit. Yet we have a government that is trying to get us to focus on cultural issues rather than addressing this scourge. This book is eye opening.

Multiple books, one of which is excellent

The book is too ambitious and attempts to describe the fentanyl and methamphetamine scourge from neurological, sociological, human-interest, and economic perspectives. I could have done without the neuroscience and stretched analogies between fast-food and drug addictions. I could also have done without the author's simplistic and leftist economic views: corporations are bad. Finally, the author's retelling of the Purdue Pharma/Oxycontin story was fine, but has been covered elsewhere in more detail and better. But the book is excellent and important at its heart: describing in heart-breaking detail the stories of addicts and dealers, and the cops and especially citizens who try to sort through the wreckage and make things better. The book finally calls out the media for focusing on housing costs rather than drug addiction when describing homeless tent cities, which reinforce a drug-centered life and are funded by pimping and theft. Makes clear that “leniency” for addicts is often the worst thing for them, as it allows them to continue their criminal and horribly self-destructive behavior. While drug courts can help, it is the threat of prison that gets addicts to choose to participate in treatment programs.