A review by elerireads
Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs by Johann Hari

3.0

Had some interesting information and ideas, but the writing style irritated me. It was very sensationalist and anecdotal, and I didn't really get on with it being framed as a first person account of his journey of discovery of the war on drugs. In particular, there were a lot of instances where he writes "I couldn't understand X", or "But I still couldn't see the reason for Y", or "I had to think about Z for a long time before so and so explained it to me like this" and the X, Y, Z he's talking about seem blatantly obvious to me so I can't believe they weren't also obvious to him, which makes the whole thing feel very disingenuous. The anecdotes about all the different people in different places definitely added to the book, but the constant use of overdramatic literary devices was just annoying and dragged them out. I think maybe Hari could have done with someone explaining the "show not tell" principle to him - it very much felt like he was trying to make the story interesting rather than showing us that it is. I did learn a fair bit and I'm glad I read it, but I would have much preferred a drier, condensed version that cut out all the unnecessary crap.