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4.11 AVERAGE
4.11 AVERAGE
I agree with another reviewer who said this should be required reading for everyone. The sheer volume of information Quinones pored over and people he talked to is staggering. But it led to the most comprehensive examination of the "opioid epidemic" I've read. Anyone who struggles to understand how we got here, or what, exactly, is meant by opioid epidemic, must read this. Painstaking research and heartbreaking interviews from all sides of the issue are expertly intertwined. I finished this book sad, angry and with a little bit of hope. I'm concentrating on the hope.
This was an incredibly enlightening book! In charting the rise of the Xalisco Boys and their black tar heroin in parallel with the opiate crisis in America, Quinones weaves many distinct threads into a coherent tapestry of human nature. For me as a future medical professional, among other lessons, this book starkly highlights the importance of going back to the primary literature and questioning medical dogma that doesn't make theoretical sense. One star docked just because I felt the book start to drag and get slightly repetitive near the end.
Gripping, devastating account of the transition from opioids to heroin and the "masterful" distribution strategy employed by those in the drug-trafficking trade.
A fascinating and frightening story.
The book could have used a good editor, though. There was a lot of repetition.
I’d still recommend it for anyone who wants to know more about the opioid crisis.
The book could have used a good editor, though. There was a lot of repetition.
I’d still recommend it for anyone who wants to know more about the opioid crisis.
WHY IS THIS A THING.
Why is there such a thing as a Young Adult Edition of a normal nonfiction book?
I promise that people, like, age 12-17 or whatever do not need things dumbed down for them so desperately that it necessitates a whole entire separate publication. I swear.
I would never, ever, ever in a million years have picked this up, except it was sent to me by the publisher. I don’t feel obligated to read things that are sent to me without my request or agreement, but in this case, the topic is so important that I figured why not.
Honestly, I wish I had read 3-4 longform articles instead.
This was fairly unemotional and, to me, borderline unreadable. It takes stories of incomprehensible tragedy and renders them into facts and numbers and occasional one-off sentences about children and siblings and friends and parents left behind.
Worst of all, this contained a lot of sweeping, uncorrected prejudices inserted without nuance - stereotypes about people on food stamps, people with Medicaid cards, illegal immigrants, drug addicts, Mexicans, African Americans. Statements like “all ranchos hate black people” and “all rancho fathers hit their children” were referenced time and time again as if they were fact, rather than biased interpretations of a few cases as representing a whole.
Maybe this can be chalked up to it being the young adult edition, but I found it to be a reprehensibly conveyed work.
Bottom line: I can’t speak for the original edition, but if you’re thinking of reading this book - read basically any other source instead.
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the content in this book: very important.
basically everything about how it was written and formatted and relayed: not for me.
review to come / 1.5 stars
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just doing some light weekend reading
(thanks to the publisher for the copy)
Why is there such a thing as a Young Adult Edition of a normal nonfiction book?
I promise that people, like, age 12-17 or whatever do not need things dumbed down for them so desperately that it necessitates a whole entire separate publication. I swear.
I would never, ever, ever in a million years have picked this up, except it was sent to me by the publisher. I don’t feel obligated to read things that are sent to me without my request or agreement, but in this case, the topic is so important that I figured why not.
Honestly, I wish I had read 3-4 longform articles instead.
This was fairly unemotional and, to me, borderline unreadable. It takes stories of incomprehensible tragedy and renders them into facts and numbers and occasional one-off sentences about children and siblings and friends and parents left behind.
Worst of all, this contained a lot of sweeping, uncorrected prejudices inserted without nuance - stereotypes about people on food stamps, people with Medicaid cards, illegal immigrants, drug addicts, Mexicans, African Americans. Statements like “all ranchos hate black people” and “all rancho fathers hit their children” were referenced time and time again as if they were fact, rather than biased interpretations of a few cases as representing a whole.
Maybe this can be chalked up to it being the young adult edition, but I found it to be a reprehensibly conveyed work.
Bottom line: I can’t speak for the original edition, but if you’re thinking of reading this book - read basically any other source instead.
---------
the content in this book: very important.
basically everything about how it was written and formatted and relayed: not for me.
review to come / 1.5 stars
---------
just doing some light weekend reading
(thanks to the publisher for the copy)
I wanted to read this book in its entirety to give me a better understanding of this plague in our country, however I only made it about 1/3 of the way through the book while riding in the car during a long-distance holiday drive. I am a social worker so I had convinced myself that reading this book would be interesting and insightful and I would be better off for having read it and knowing this story. As it turned out, perhaps the subject matter was too depressing, or that all the history about drug distribution in the US seemed tedious or maddening or boring compared to the other free-time options available to me (knitting, or watching the scenery along the drive to Virginia).
I may give this another try later. It could be that the book was not a good match at the time and what I truly needed was just to 'be on vacation'.
I may give this another try later. It could be that the book was not a good match at the time and what I truly needed was just to 'be on vacation'.
This book is incredibly repetitive. The Xalisco black tar heroin business model is interesting, but the author describes it over and over again, in almost the same words. How many times we do we need to know the story of a cop in a different city figuring out how the local heroin trade worked? Same with the details about prescription pain medications. The book could easily have been cut by 1/3.
I also found it frustrating that narrative jumped around from place to place and person to person. The chapters are all very short, and so we spend a few pages with one character, then jump to another, again and again. Often there is no link at all between one chapter and the next: one chapter is about a law suit in North Carolina, and the next begins with the history of the Russian Pentecostal movement. Such a frustrating read.
I also found it frustrating that narrative jumped around from place to place and person to person. The chapters are all very short, and so we spend a few pages with one character, then jump to another, again and again. Often there is no link at all between one chapter and the next: one chapter is about a law suit in North Carolina, and the next begins with the history of the Russian Pentecostal movement. Such a frustrating read.
This book was very good. I flew through the first few chapters, and in general felt like it was very well written narratively (though, as I write below, eventually the chapters got fairly repetitive) but still with a focus on good journalism. The facts presented are heartbreaking, and the theme/focus on Portsmouth, Ohio was done well - the last chapter was a good ending, I think.
My only complaint is that it was repetitive at times, especially as I got further along. It felt like each chapter could be taken out and read independently - that's how much repetition there was between them all. I can see how this is useful/reflective of a more journalistic approach, but as a book it drove me up the wall, enough to give this 4/5 instead of 5/5 (which, in terms of content, I'd say it's 5/5.)
My only complaint is that it was repetitive at times, especially as I got further along. It felt like each chapter could be taken out and read independently - that's how much repetition there was between them all. I can see how this is useful/reflective of a more journalistic approach, but as a book it drove me up the wall, enough to give this 4/5 instead of 5/5 (which, in terms of content, I'd say it's 5/5.)
I read this because it was quoted in Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe. It's is a well told and comprehensive story. Quinones definitely writes from the perspective of a crime reporter, not an activist. He's uniformly friendly to cops and does a fair amount of personal responsibility moralizing without much attention to the economic forces that shaped the opioid epidemic or the industrial decline in the rust belt epicenter or poverty in rural Mexico.
This was such an interesting story, but I don't think the telling was very well organized. Some parts felt repetitive, and I would lose track of who the main players were at other points.