The Least of Us
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“Jam-packed with amazing facts and, like all of Quinones’ work, reads like a thriller. You may think you know this story. Trust me, you don’t.”
Townhall
An Amazon Editor’s Top Pick in Nonfiction
A New York Times Book Review pick of Best Books Now in Paperback
Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award
Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction
Shortlisted for the Zocalo Book Prize
A Los Angeles Times Pick for Reading List Nonfiction
From the New York Times bestselling author of Dreamland comes 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 United States 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.
Praise