Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town

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!

Nick Reding obviously put a lot of hard work and research into writing this book. The characters are real and they are unforgettable. Also, lots of great background on the impact of business, agriculture, the economy, immigration, politics and big pharma on America's struggle with this easily attainable, highly-addictive drug. Definitely worth a listen - keep an open mind. Not everything is as you think and understanding the complexities is the first step to reaching a solution.

An interesting subject that attempts to chronicle the effects of Meth on a small town.

Then it's about the loss of union jobs. Then the Mexican cartels. Then the town again. Then Big Agra. Then the prosecutor's inability to settle down with the love of his life. Then illegal immigrants.

Great subject material in dire need of a good editor.

I listened to this book in just a few days, much more quickly than I would an audiobook of comperable length. This is because the story is engrossing from the start, abetted by Reding's skillful writing.

In the end, though, the writing is all I took from the book. It's a beautifully-rendered portrait of a small town in Iowa, and to a lesser degree, the entire American Midwest.

Reding attempts to view the methamphetamine problem in America as a metaphor, and in this he is unsuccessful. However, I would recommend the book for the beautiful writing and for the loving depiction of a part of America that is rapidly disappearing.

Even though the subject matter is profoundly depressing, Methland is an absorbing read. Looking at the rural meth epidemic through the lens of Oelwein, a quintessential midwestern small town in Iowa, Reding tells a story that's both personal and national. He makes a compelling case for his thesis is that the meth problem isn't simply a matter of addiction, but is strongly tied up in the working class history of the drug, weak regulation to control it (thanks to pharmaceutical lobbyists), and the continuing economic decline of rural America, where cooking meth in one's sink promised many people a steadier future than being a farmer or meat packer.

While the book's writing and analysis are a bit fragmentary, the personal stories paint a stirring picture of an epidemic in progress. The anecdote about the drug dealer who has started hallucinating living human heads in trees, and severely disfigures himself in a lab explosion, reads like a passage from a Stephen King novel. Other stories, while they sometimes wander from the book's primary focus, perhaps make a better point than pages of statistics. It's not hard to visualize broken families, grim, boarded-up store fronts, police forces and social services that lack the resources to do very much, and a cold, midwestern wind howling across a middle America whose fabric is steadily unraveling.

This book is totally frightening because it is true. The examples of decent people gone terribly bad are just shocking. I couldn't stop listening, even when the book bogs down into back history/meth production details. Yes it does bog down, but reading those passages is absolutely critical to understanding the depth and pervasiveness of meth addiction. So many wasted lives and hurt and heartache.

This was really a thought-provoking read.

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.

I'm from Iowa and I really wanted to like this one. Interesting subject(s) but it's not a riveting read. I struggled to find a beginning a middle and and end. When it was over I felt I had only read a first draft, I think the editor failed on this one. Instead of a book, I heard several essays, about a small town, about meth, about the drug trade but in the end, they were not tied together in a meaningful way. To make matters worse the essays were not well realized either. Each one had a few interesting pages but there is not enough to each to be compelling. What was the point about writing a whole book about methland? There's a book there but this wasn't quite it.

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.

Well read but boring in the extreme. This story had potential to be a realy good one. Unfortunately the author did not meet that potential in any way. Reads as interesting as stereo instructions.