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Sam Quinones

Dreamland

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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.
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526 printed pages
Publication year
2015
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Impressions

  • Wiebke Loubsershared an impression6 years ago
    👍Worth reading
    🔮Hidden Depths
    💡Learnt A Lot
    🎯Worthwhile
    🚀Unputdownable

    An extraordinarily well-referenced, eye-opening and page-turning book on a topic that is as complex and multi-facetted as it is scary and uncomfortable. An all-encompassing exposé, giving the reader intimate access to the world of opiate addiction in small town America, its cause and effect, in a both realistic and empathetic manner. Truly a master piece!

Quotes

  • Wiebke Loubserhas quoted6 years ago
    So there are even times when I think I’m right—that perhaps heroin is the most important force for positive change in our country today.
  • Wiebke Loubserhas quoted6 years ago
    Heroin is, I believe, the final expression of values we have fostered for thirty-five years. It turns every addict into narcissistic, self-absorbed, solitary hyper-consumers. A life that finds opiates turns away from family and community and devotes itself entirely to self-gratification by buying and consuming one product—the drug that makes being alone not just all right, but preferable.
  • Wiebke Loubserhas quoted6 years ago
    “America bought into Charles Dickens’s Scrooge; they couldn’t get past making the money. But it is about taking care of the family of Bob Cratchit. It is taking care of Tiny Tim that matters, that actually brings joy into your life. We forgot that. We were quite content to have our workers throw a piece of coal on the fire to stay warm. America did that. Charles Dickens gave us the warning, told us, ‘Don’t go down this road.’ Think of the chains on Scrooge’s business partner who died lonely, miserable; then you see him as a ghost with chains all around him. That kind of reminds you of what Portsmouth’s been forever—a ghost town with chains all over it.”

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