The Death and Life of an American Small Town

Well researched and well written look at what small town life has become like in the early 21st century. The book is about the changes in rural America that leads to a drug epidemic; a "war on drugs" does not fix this problem.

I was very interested to read this book as Oelwein is only 18 miles from my hometown. I was very disappointed when I finished it. While there were some interesting aspects, I felt the author jumped around so much it was hard to follow. More than once, I had to look back to see if I had missed something. There were also many factual errors (UNI is in Cedar Falls, not Cedar Rapids, Iowa City isn't the largest city in Iowa, and so on).

I did find the information on Lori Arnold interesting, but that was only part of the book.

An interesting subject, but a so-so book.

While this book is obviously journalistic in nature, it never really feels like a news or magazine article, but reads more like a novel. You begin to care about the bigger characters, like Clay and Murphy, and are brought even further into the story with the tales of people like Major and Nathan.

Although the author is not the best writer per se, the story told is captivating and allows the reader to develop a different view of rural America, the drug epidemic and all parties involved (from meth cook, to dealer, to addict and his/her family). Written without judging those involved, Nick Reding succeeds in explaining the world of meth to the layperson.

An engaging look at the wreckage caused by crystal meth. While the stories are heartbreaking, I found the central themes of rebuilding and perseverance to be wonderfully inspiring. Entrepreneurs, unite and rebuild America!

Very eye opening...sad but true... More and more Americans are turning to drugs... We need to comtinue to fight this war and open the minds of those who are not touched by it so directly as all of us are touched by it indirectly.

While this was an enlightening book, it got pretty tedious about half way through. The author tends to jump around a lot from one related topic to another and it would be helpful if he did this a little less. Although I plan to finish it eventually, I left. off after reading ( per my Kindle) 53% of it.

This book gave me insight of the sufferings of the addicts and their peers. I liked the book. The author kept good updates on the addicts. The author gave informative news on laws and mandates on meth.

Very well documented and written. It gives a whole new slant on the meth problem and the reasons and explananation for it. I hadn't realized there are deeper reasons for this pervasive problem. The political reasons were disgusting; we need to stop idoloizing the "almighty dollar" and big business and get back to the basics - empathy for each other.

This book is essential reading for anyone administering to tweakers in various settings. Essential to all who have noticed that this plague is all around us. Sadly the book has several years on it so for fact one should look else where. But for general fact and an in depth consideration of many aspects of what has happened and continues to happen it is an excellent chronicle.

This book describes the impact of the meth epdemic on Middle America, but doesn't only focus on the particulars of the drug and its rise to ascendancy over the last couple decades, also examining (if cursorily) some of the societal factors which created fertile ground for this weed to take root in.

Quick read, but I was a little disappointed. The book wandered off at times leaving the whole Meth subject behind. I would've liked it more if it had stayed on topic and had more examples or interviews with meth users. He should've put more of a spotlight on the perils of Meth use through these types of examples. The part where he spends pages upon pages telling us about his family heritage it AWFUL - it is so boring - just page filler stuff or else the book might've been too short. B-

Read this because required reading for my son's reading comprehension class at community college. If you don't know much about rural America and the challenges facing those that live there, you should read this. Those that live there can readily identify with the disappearance of small town collegiality as a precursor to isolation, loneliness, desperation and then desperate acts. This why we need strong churches in small towns. Pastor David

The book "Methland" explores the reasons for the meth problem in Oelwein today.I grew up in Oelwein in the fifties and the worst drug problems for teenagers was alcohol and cigarettes. Looking back, life was good then. What happened over the next 50+ years is explained thoroughly by Mr. Reding. What we have in Oelwein now is the end of life as we knew it. The problems uncovered by Mr. Reding are the problems the town, the state and the country face today. I recommend reading this book to understand what is happening in our world today. It is written truthfully, factually, and provides insights into where meth comes from, how it is obtained, who uses it, and why people become so quickly addicted.

Sally Smith, graduate of OHS in 1956

This is a difficult read because of the content - something we as a country do not want to face. I read it because I feel a responsiblity to know what is happening to my homeland. I am a midwesterner by birth and have watched it decay. I recommend this book to everyone - it is well written; a good and compassion reporting.

Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town I learned so much from this book. But I am scared, especially after reading the negative reviews. Why are some of you so visceral and mean? Reding exposes big Pharmas long (and I imagine billion dollar relationship) with illegal meth. He vividly details big Ags and big food processing's devastating battle with the family farm and the hometown. He carefully describes how the Mexican drug lords and their army of illegals and vicious knee-cap breakers are replacing the Colombian mafia. But most importantly, he shows that "ordinary Iowa Joes" can win the battle - or at least put up one heck of a fight. Read the book. Unless what you really need to know is how many people live in Iowa City. Meanwhile, Reding, keep your back next to the wall. I think that you may have really opened up something here.

The book is very poorly written. It's repetitive and poorly organized. It's as though the author had a difficult time concentrating... if only he had been aware of a substance that would counteract that problem.

Great book, very informative, lots of statistics, I enjoyed the different perspectives on Meth addiction. I hope that doctor has retired though, he is an addict ;ike everyone else, drugs and alcohol do not discriminate.

This is an important sociological overview of meth in a small town in America's heartland - its production, distribution, abuse, prosecution, "treatment" and the destruction it leaves in its wake (individual, familial and societal). If you are looking for loads of juicy stories about the human tragedy of meth use (as some reviewers here apparently were), this is not the focus of the book.

Oelwein could be Anysmalltown, USA, where the bulk of the employment opportunities have dried up or moved away (in the name of progress - giant agribusiness), and where the inhabitants are looking to escape their troubles and feel better and have the opportunity to make a few bucks to boot. One of the great revelations of the book is that meth was formerly widely used, and historically was associated with increased productivity and an increased sense of well-being (although its bad side-effects were well known).

Just how Oelwein morphed from a railroad roundhouse/agricultural community into a place where people ride their bikes in the open in order to cook meth is a story well-developed in the book, told from the perspective of the prosecutor, the hospital chief of staff and the mayor. Their views on how Oelwein might be brought right again, and their own personal struggles of being in Oelwein are valuable - the approaches they ultimately take might serve as a model for other communities in dire circumstances.

How Oelwein's predicament dovetails with government anti-drug policy (and the incredible power wielded by the pharmaceutical companies lobbyists); the hierarchy of the Mexican drug industry; international regulation of the materials needed to make meth; and the rise of giant agribusiness (both for the low wages and no benefits, as well as the employment of persons of dubious nationality) is a tale of many a small town in America. In many respects, it is also a call to action on all of these fronts.

While the book is highly informative, it would have benefitted from much better editing. Written in a conversational tone, I began to be frustrated by so many sentences beginning with, "That's to say....". On page 183, Reding writes, "But I think I was also looking for the meaning of a small town in my own life and in my family's history. And what if anything, had changed so profoundly that when I would tell my father what I was seeing in Iowa, he was made to wonder if he would even recognize the place whence he comes."

That second sentence is sorely in need of a rework, and many of its ilk pepper this book. Here's another, on pages 184-5: "In the winter, they market-hunted jackrabbits, by which it is meant that they went out into the fields at night in the backs of trucks and killed the animals as they were temporarily paralyzed by the headlights." And one more, from page 222: "Or rather, it had long ago to him begun needing attention, and he was just now able to see this." Heaven help the reader!

Last, Reding comes clean when he reveals that his father had risen through the ranks of Monsanto to become its Vice Chairman, and I applaud him for his honesty. What I really didn't want to know concerned addictions in his own family - and what I really couldn't understand was that he reveals that he moved with his pregnant wife to back to St. Louis, and expresses great concern about raising a family there while nearby Jefferson County was the meth lab capital of the US (in 2005).

This is a book by a journalist, Nick Reding. Mr. Reding appears to intend his book as contemporary history, economics, and sociology. However, he apparently lacks training in any of those disciplines. From what I could find about him on the web, he

received his B.A. in Creative Writing and English Literature from Northwestern University in 1994. He has an MFA in Creative Writing from N.Y.U., where he was a University Fellow from 1995 til 1997. He lived in New York City for thirteen years, where he worked as a magazine editor, a graduate school professor, and a freelance writer. His first book, The Last Cowboys at the End of the World, was published by Crown in 2002. Methland is his second book. He has written for Harper¹s, Food and Wine, Outside, Fast Company.

His thesis is that the heartland of America has been widely compromised by a meth epidemic caused by the loss of union jobs and family farms. He contends that this loss has come about largely through a conspiracy among and between large agricultural and pharmaceutical businesses and governmental interests. Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush receive attention, as well. As he presents the problem, meth addiction is too large and widespread to be explained as the result of poor personal decisions by individuals. Rather, it is a situation in which otherwise stable and productive people find their lives and options so terribly constrained that the use, and I emphasize use, and manufacture and distribution of meth seem the only rational choice left to them. For example, one woman with a 10th grade education, having built a multi-million dollar meth manufacturing and distribution system that in turn resulted in a 8-year prison sentence, finds herself reduced to working in a meat processing plant upon release and, owing to the cold and physical exhaustion -- as well as a desire to help her son repay his debts, returns to meth use and distribution as relief, and, ultimately, returns to jail. The unspoken contention is that no one would, or should, be willing and able to endure such privations without narcotics. (Mr. Reding later alleges that meat processing jobs are readily filled by illegal aliens from Mexico, who he insinuates also act in a collective sense as a meth importation and distribution system.)

As a substitute for training in the disciplines necessary to establishing his thesis, Mr. Reding relies on interviews of what he presents as knowledgeable and reliable sources. He finds a source on agricultural economics who provides positive citations to Karl Marx, which Mr. Reding appears to accept as appropriate support for his thesis. Meth addicts are asked to help us understand why meth use is a rational response to the centralization of agricultural production. Locals provide "history" where needed.

It is one thing to read journalists - in this case someone who has limited his study to English literature and creative writing - on the events of the day. Their presentations are necessarily temporary and subject to correction by learned disciplines. It is quite another to accept book-length theories based on seemingly political convictions buttressed by selective interviews.

This guy belches out words almost like he is free associating. What an annoying waste of time! I wanted to learn something about the Meth problem in the US and instead this man blathers in absurd detail about everything that passes in front of his eyes. Don't read this book.

Somewhere there is a good story waiting to be told about Oelwein, Iowa and its meth problems, but it is not contained in Nick Reding's tall tale entitled Methland. When an author cannot get simple details correct, details that could be ascertained by a 5 minute perusal of an Iowa roadmap, it is hard to put much faith that the rest of the book is not equally flawed.

Mr. Reding might want to know that the University of Northern Iowa is not in Cedar Rapids, as he states on page 74. His New York and St. Louis readers will not care about such a minor slip up, but they should. When Reding cannot get the little things correct, such as the distances between towns or the simple fact that Oelwein isn't on the Mississippi River (as Reding implies on the first page), then why should we believe he can recall a drunken conversation he may have had 3 or 4 years ago? It just doesn't make sense.

Methland is less a book about "the death and life of an American town" as it is an attempt to indict corporations such as Tyson or Cargill. I found it fascinating that more than once he talks about workers being unable to obtain worker's compensation insurance from their employers, but provides no documentation for this assertion. No names, no examples, no dates, just a casual comment.

It is difficult to quarrel with Reding's impressions of people and events, because his impressions are his own. However, in the opinion of many people who have actually lived in the area for years as opposed to visiting for a few weeks (as did Reding), his impressions are misguided and I think in some cases downright false. It must be convenient for him that he made no recordings or took no notes. In this way he is unaccountable for his impressions.

The biggest problem with this book is it is simply inaccurate. It is filled with mistakes, and is sloppily written and even more sloppily edited. It is difficult to imagine such a book could even be published when it contains so many factual errors.

Unfortunately Reding could not decide what book to write. He tried to tell about the plight of a small town battling drug abuse. He tried to bring attention to the struggles of illegals and their substandard working conditions. He wanted to talk about the struggles of the family farm and the rise of the evil corporations who have no compassion for humanity. Sadly, he fails to really cover any of these topics in rich enough detail to keep the reader informed or interested. Somewhere in here is the beginning of a good Novel but as a work of nonfiction, Methland fails to make the grade.

This is the kind of in-depth writing and reporting that simply is not done much by American journalism today (or what generally passes for it). Of course this is a book not a newspaper or magazine and a subject as complex as this one demands a book or really many books. It sounds like the Oregonian newspaper actually did attempt something really in-depth with it's series on Meth described in the book. Anyway this book is a mix of journalism, history and human interest that is essential to understanding what has happened and is still happening in this country. I worked in Iowa for almost seven years and passed through or stopped in many of the towns in Reding describes but never Oelwein (it's not really located on a large river). As he points out however Oelwein is as much a metaphor as a place, this is an America-wide issue. It is a really ambitious book--taking on themes each of which could make its own book--the rise of big agribusiness, globalization, illegal immigration, the war on drugs, Mexican drug cartels, Big-Pharma and its obscene lobbying, the cultural decay in America and basic human biology, psychology and behavior. I applaud him for the effort, though it makes for some very discouraging and scary reading at times. If there is a significant weakness in the book perhaps that is it, trying to cover so much in only 250 pages. But he is able to convincingly unify many of these factors and trends together into a plausible explanation of how we got to this place. I did remove a star for the fact that there are no references or footnotes to support many of his contentions. But I would love see him revisit the entire subject in a new book, as this one is now about 10 years old and I really wonder how things have or have not changed. Reding is uniquely qualified to take it on and I do not see that he has written anything new, which is unfortunate. If Hollywood and Americans can drop billions on lame Star Wars (or other) remakes surely this subject (and others) with infinitely greater import can be part of our national conversation.

This examines a small town in Iowa called Oelwein and how it has changed, much for the worse, over the last thirty years.

The author uses Oelwein as a microcosm of small-town U.S.A. – and he does provide examples of other towns. So to some extent he replaces our idyll of white picket fences with houses blowing up when the local methamphetamine producers’ home-made lab goes awry. We are provided with a very good historical overview of Oelwein where the large meat-packing plant laid off substantial numbers of workers and was later replaced by another company that paid minimum wage – and then the entire operation finally closed up. Oelwein’s population decreased – lowering the tax revenues. Methamphetamine moved in, providing some locals with a new revenue source and others with entertainment. For the uninitiated, like me, methamphetamine is highly addictive and gives a high that can last over 12 hours (by comparison crack is about 15 minutes). Over time you need more and more of it to get high – and one of the long term effects can be permanent neurological damage. A pregnant woman can pass these effects unto her baby. Users can experience very vivid hallucinations and one gets a feeling of being omnipotent. The substances to make it are (or were) legal – you can go to any drugstore – but chemical processing is required after – which is illegal.

The author also explains that there are various global factors at play – the meat packing companies close plants and lower wages – and hire migrant workers from Mexico; the large pharmaceutical companies make money from selling the illegal ingredients – and drug trafficking organizations from Mexico buy the drugs in bulk quantities and funnel them up to the U.S. via the migrant labour. A very small percentage of the migrant labour force is involved with the transportation and distribution of drugs on the vast migrant network that extends over all of the U.S.A. Some dealers will masquerade as labourers when in fact they are outright drug dealers. The NAFTA agreement (North American Free Trade Agreement) was also a bonus to the Mexican drug cartel.

The author also demonstrates how the drug dealers adapt quickly to legislation passed by governments that attempt to curtail the drug trade. When legislation is passed the local drug dealer’s (the mom and pop chemical shops) take over; but eventually the large dealers in Mexico find another distributor or source. For instance, they started buying a key ingredient for methamphetamine from China which does not follow U.S. and U.N. regulations concerning drugs.

The poverty inflicted by closing plants in small towns creates an environment where methamphetamine becomes acceptable. Methamphetamine allows one to stay awake for long periods of time – so users can hold onto two jobs. Small towns do not have the layers of large cities and they are becoming poorer and poorer. Addicts in small towns, like Oelwein, will have limited access to recovery centres and drug counselors. Children, who are removed from their homes, because their parents were methamphetamine addicts, may not be diagnosed properly. Methamphetamine releases fumes which can cause brain damage to all inhabitants of the house – and to the police when they arrest the inhabitants.

This book provides an examination of how a small town deteriorates over a number of years. We are provided with several agonizing pictures of individuals (addicts, doctors, police, counselors...). We could have done without the details of Nathan Lein girlfriends and the relation of them to his parents – I didn’t see how that fitted into this otherwise excellent portrayal.

This was a world I was unfamiliar with. The author provided us with not only a view of Oelwein, but how it is related to the global world - companies using non-unionized workers, pharmaceutical companies not caring who is buying their product, and the drug cartels adapting quickly to any change in their market. It would seem that Oelwein was readjusting positively, meth-houses are decreasing and there are fewer arrests of meth-addicts – but how real is this new-found prosperity – and the meth problem may just have re-concentrated in another town down the road.

In this explosive piece of investigative reporting journalist Nick Reding portrays an American society fast falling prey to the horrors of methamphetamine addiction. Focusing on two small towns in central and southern Iowa, the supposed crucible of everything middle America, Reding went in and dissected their current state of affairs. What he found was nothing short of troubling and downright ugly. Here were once two fairly vibrant farming communities who had recently fallen on economic hard times and had to produce 'crank' to catch up with the outside world. It is a bizarre story that Reding tells, especially when one considers how the problem took root and who are some of the big players like Lori Arnold, Tom Arnold's sister. Reading this book will certainly change your perspective on the future of the middle class in this country, even if you only accept a fraction of Reding's findings. This designer drug, made from an evil concoction of the over-the-counter drugs like ephedrine laced with caustic and lethal household substances like detergents and solvents, has the power to offer people sustained highs while destroying their minds and compromising their bodies. Reding uses part of this book to look at how this drug has actually done these things to the citizens of Oelwein and other Iowan towns. The number of neighborhood meth labs and cooks has grown exponentially over the last decade to the point of turning the town into a veritable social dump with no civil pride. I travelled recently through South Dakota and came across a similar wind-blown and failed town where nothing seemed to be happening except a few bored teens playing dodge ball on the main street of town. Families are falling apart, buildings have become dilapidated, and businesses have packed up and left. In the interests of balanced reporting Reding does offer some hope. Fair-minded and responsible people are stepping forward to reclaim these towns that have fallen on hard times. The answer, it would seem, lies in creating a vision that combines the creation of meaningful jobs and the promotion of strong family values. With the way America is going in terms of concentrating on fortifying its big cities as economic zones, its rural parts are definitely falling prey to the drug cartels. If you enjoyed Larry McMurty's "The Last Picture Show", you might want to read this one for the factual follow-up on a seemingly massively unstoppable socioeconomic decline.

Nick Reding has a nice literary style, which I appreciate in a non-fiction book as it makes for less dry reading. That's one of the redeeming qualities of this book, which was interesting but frankly didn't really bring that much insight to the table. Okay, meth is bad, we all know that. And drug addiction is horrible, drug cartels are evil and dangerous, and poverty tends to breed despair and thus drug use. These are all well-known facts and true of every addictive drug and every drug "epidemic." But color me skeptical when I'm told that this generation's drug is yet another incarnation of the WORST DRUG EVER IN THE HISTORY OF MANKIND!

Reding goes into the history of meth and traces the rise of meth as a small town drug that is symbolic of the woes of Middle America by tying it to one town in particular: Oelwein, Iowa. He takes a sample of individual real-life characters -- the optimistic but beleaguered mayor, the pragmatic and cynical prosecutor, the alcoholic doctor, and of course, various dealers and addicts -- to personalize the effects of meth on this town. The stories are interesting but nothing we haven't heard before. Likewise, the rise of the Mexican Mafia is just a reprise of the Colombian cocaine cartels in the 80s. Once again, ham-handed legislation tainted by lobbyist influence managed only to strengthen the hold that organized crime has on the trade.

The connection to globalization and poverty is there, but I think it's a weaker part of Reding's narrative, particularly when he veers into agribusiness consolidation. This represents a whole host of problems afflicting the American heartland, and meth is just one piece of it, more a side effect than a root cause.

I found the book interesting and Reding's storytelling quite adequate, but it seemed like there was quite a bit of filler to pad it out to a full-length book. The Oelwein sections themselves were only part of the book.

This isn't a bad book or even a particularly flawed one, and certainly it increases understanding of the specifics of the drug methamphetamine. But I didn't find it to be ground-breaking, nor wholly convincing in its thesis that meth is the worst!drug!ever! and that the loss of American farming and blue collar jobs is responsible for the problem.

Nick Reding has written a highly readable and sympathetic account for those looking for a better understanding of the effects of meth addiction in rural America. The book's core revolves around a single town, Oelwein, Iowa, in which Mr. Reding spent a great deal of time speaking with public officials contending with the meth problem as well as with meth addicts themselves. I think that this in-depth focus on a single small town was a prudent choice. While it obviously limits his ability to draw too many general inferences to rural America at large, Reding convincingly shows how the problems faced by Oelwein are fairly emblematic of those facing many small towns.

I've seen some criticism here of Reding's thesis tying meth to changes in the agricultural and food processing industries. I don't think Reding is drawing a simple, straight line from big agriculture to meth. Rather, he's arguing that these large-scale economic changes, from the decline of family farming, decreasing wages in the food processing industry, and the resulting decline in population of rural communities, have created socioeconomic conditions conducive to meth addiction and production. I happen to think it's a fairly convincing hypothesis; other may not, but it's dismaying to see his argument watered down in straw-man fashion.

Overall, Reding writes very sympathetically of his subjects, those on both the right and wrong sides of the law. Indeed, the sections that emotionally affected me the most were his conversations with current and former addicts. He relates the story of a former addict with a young son. The greatest source of anxiety for this man is waiting to see if his son begins exhibiting effects of his mother's meth usage while she was pregnant. Reding also introduces us to a current addict who lost most of his skin when he blew up his mother's house while making meth. Reding is not overly sentimental when discussing these individuals, and certainly doesn't excuse their actions, but at the same time he writes candidly and sympathetically about the consequences of their actions.

Aside from this anthropological analysis of a small Iowan town, Reding spends a good portion of the book discussing the evolution of the meth production industry from the 1980's to the present day. Specifically, he discusses the entry into the market of large Mexican trafficking organizations that are far more difficult for local law enforcement to deal with than the mom and pop meth labs. He also discusses DEA efforts to contend with meth by regulating imports of pseudoephedrine and he discusses the relatively mixed effects of the Meth Control Act.

I've seen some criticism here of Reding's writing style, which kind of surprises me, because I think the book is well written. Reding does resort to symbolism and metaphor on occasion, and his efforts to find deeper meaning in meth's place in small towns sometimes seem a bit stretched. Nevertheless, I highly recommend this book to anybody looking for a better understanding of this drug and its role in rural America.

If you've been listening to the mainstream media and government for the past twenty years, you might be tempted to think that meth was, like cocaine in the 1980s, a drug that came into fashion, enjoyed about ten years as the American drug of choice, then just as quickly disappeared. Meth might call to mind images of white trash, mid-western tweakers blowing up their trailer parks as they tried to mix up a batch of crank in their bathtubs. As is usually the case, the story isn't quite as simple or neat as the media likes to portray it. Nor, as Nick Redding contends, is it over.

For Redding, who spent four years digging the dirt out from under America's fingernails, following the multifarious threads of the meth story, the first major insight came from a doctor in the small Iowa town of Oelwein, population approximately 6000. Redding had been approaching meth as a crime story--an exposé of the drug and the criminal element that thrived on it. The doctor completely changed his perception of meth when he called it a "sociocultural cancer." Redding makes the point that we are a psychological culture, not a sociological one. That is, Americans tend to believe that people do things like get hooked on meth because there's something screwy about how they think, not something screwy with society in general. But in this book, Redding makes a convincing case that the meth problem isn't about a few whacked-out criminals. It's at one time a personal disease, a societal disease, and a symptom of a whole host of other issues woven tightly into the American fabric. It is, as several people point out in the book, a truly American drug.

Methamphetamine is a psychoactive stimulant. It increases alertness, concentration, energy, dulls the pain centers, can create a sense of euphoria, increase the libido, and sometimes lead to hallucinations. As described in Methland by someone with first-hand knowledge, it's like putting all the neurons in your brain into a shot glass and shooting them--everything you have fires simultaneously.

Meth was originally synthesized by a Japanese scientist in 1893, crystal meth by another Japanese scientist in 1919. Because of its stimulating effects, Hitler ordered that it be given to German soldiers during WWII, and there are stories of entire platoons bogged down in heavy snow, managing to press on and fight thanks to meth. Hitler himself is said to have been a meth user, and many speculate that his mental devolution might be partly because of a meth addiction. But meth perhaps fit best with post-war, industrialized America. In the 1950s, it was prescribed for a laughable list of ailments--everything from narcolepsy to alcoholism to obesity. But it found its best use as a stimulant for factory workers and other manual laborers. Because its effects are long-lasting (6-8 hours compared to the 20-minute highs of other narcotic stimulants), and because it focused rather than clouded the mind, workers found that they could increase their performance with a little hit of meth at the beginning of their shift. They could live up to the legendary American work ethic.

As with many drug epidemics, the prevalence of the drug is inextricably linked with socioeconomic and psychological factors in the host population. With Meth, it was the decline of small-town American life, a result of changes in the food and farming industries, globalism, and immigration. As small farms were bought up by larger mega corporations, and food producers looked to cut costs by consolidating and hiring cheaper and cheaper labor, many of the agricultural jobs in small-town, rural America dried up. Those manufacturing jobs that were available often went to immigrant labor, mostly Mexicans. As many previously successful Americans lost their footing, meth became both a coping mechanism and, as its popularity grew, a potential source of income. Unlike other drugs that are difficult to manufacture or require dealings with hardcore traffickers, meth could be produced in "mom and pop" labs (i.e. bathtubs), relatively easily. And that's where it came from at first.

But, as there was money to be made, it was only a matter of time before the producers began to organize, first through biker gangs like the Hell's Angels, then through entrepreneurial types, like Lori Arnold (actor Tom Arnold's sister). Arnold could be considered the queen of meth, the first to build a true network and help the drug reach hundreds of new communities across the country. She dealt with the biker gangs at first and smartly started businesses in her town to launder her money. She had built the first true meth empire, before she was finally arrested and sent to prison. On her release, nine years later, she went back to it again, only to find that the industry had been transformed. The drug itself was produced differently, more cheaply. But a truly sinister element had entered the landscape--the Mexican drug cartels.

There is a story early in the book of local methhead and dealer, Roland Jarvis. High one night, Jarvis hallucinates that there are police helicopters circling his house. He pours the entire contents of his meth lab down a drain in his basement. Then, satisfied that he has destroyed the evidence, he lights a cigarette. The fumes seeping from his drain ignite and his house explodes. When the police arrive, Jarvis is in his front yard, running about madly, most of his skin melted off of his body, begging them to shoot him. That's the old meth game.

The new game, is this: A small-town police officer receives a call from a man with a Mexican accent. The man tells him to stop poking around such and such. He then tells the officer that if he does not stop, the man will kidnap his wife and children and kill them all. To let the police officer know that he's not joking, the man recounts the daily schedule of the wife and children. This is small-town America. The police officer knows and loves his community. He grew up there. And in this town, he knows, things like this are not supposed to happen. But thanks to meth, they sometimes do.

Throw on top of this convoluted mess the pharmaceutical industry's strong lobbying effort against many of the proposed reforms to curb the meth epidemic--laws placing a limit on the amount of cold medicine (which can be used to synthesize meth) a person can buy at one time, or making available to law enforcement agencies sales records, or including a mechanism in the records of pharmacies to kill suspicious sales.

Redding reaches at times, like when he tries to draw a comparison between the Mexican drug cartels and the pharmaceutical companies. And he tends to wander off onto personal tangents about his subjects, or poetic waxings about the geography of the farmland, all which feel a little superfluous. But all in all, Methland is a captivating, sobering portrait of an American heartland that has transformed from the idyllic small towns of Mellencamp songs to a place with a darkness in the corners and behind the walls.

In the end, though, there is hope. Return to Oelwein, the small Iowa town. There is progress being made there, where they're combating meth by rebuilding the community. A small group of dedicated citizens are giving the town a new face, a new center, new roads and streetlights. The strategy is not to fight meth, but to fight the conditions in which it thrives. If they can build a strong, economically stable community with signs of a bright future, they're hoping that will push the meth out.

"Methland" contains valuable information not only about how and why methamphetamine has taken hold in rural communities in the United States, but how those communities are struggling to reinvent themselves as global capitalism has destroyed good agricultural jobs and the pride that went with them. The book SHOULD be read for its lucid insights into the connections among agribusiness, the pharmaceutical industry, immigration policy and the international drug trade and how they affect ordinary people, but that doesn't mean it's not going to frustrate a discerning reader. The prose often feels as though it were forced out of a near-empty tube of toothpaste. The narrative keeps circling back on itself, with facts stated, repeated, and repeated again. One gets the impression the publisher was trying to make the book thicker.

For those interested in more background on US agricultural policy, I recommend Joel Salatin's August 16, 2013, "A Note from Joel." You can find it on Polyface Farm's Facebook page.

Methland is Nick Reding's account of how methamphetamine ravaged Oelwein, Iowa. Reding notes that most Americans imagine drugs to be an urban problem. The meth epidemic, in contrast, has helped destroy many small communities at a time when these communities are also struggling with severe economic problems.

The best part of Methland is its cast of characters. Readers learn about an alcoholic physician who struggles to combat the health problems that meth has brought to Oelwein. One of the largest meth dealers is the sister of comedian Tom Arnold. There is also a 6-foot, 9-inch attorney who prosecutes many of the criminals involved in the meth trade. Reding's vivid descriptions of these Iowans brings his story to life.

For most readers, the most-memorable aspect of Methland will be the lurid anecdotes recounting the bizarre behavior of meth users. For instance, one man breaks into a silo and steals concentrated fertilizer; during the theft, the man gets the fertilizer on his pants. The man then gets high on meth and, due to his intoxication, doesn't realize that the fertilizer is burning off one of his testicles. Methland is full of incredible anecdotes.

There are some weak elements to Methland. When Reding moves his story outside of Iowa, the book loses steam. Reding explains how Mexican drug cartels control the flow of meth into the U.S. He also details why U.S. Government policies have been ineffective at stopping the production of meth. While this material helps put the meth epidemic into perspective, it does not mesh well with the material that centers on Oelwein.

Methland is a provocative account of the toll meth has taken on America's heartland. I recommend it.

Having graduated from Dunkerton High School-20 miles away, I found this to be an excellent book that filled in a lot of questions I had about Oelwein and other small towns in NE Iowa. Returning to the area at least annually since leaving for college I found Dunkerton, Oelwein and other small towns increasingly "blighted" and abandoned looking. My Brother purchased a home near Fairbank-approx. 10 miles from Oelwein so we made numerous trips to Oelwein during a renovation of his home. The time frame was the early to mid-2000's...approx. the same time frame as when this book was written. I was SHOCKED at the condition of Oelwein and can attest to the closed business, boarded up homes, unkempt lawns and property etc. I think Reding nailed the cause as a combination of good jobs leaving and the meth problem. Often times when I questioned my parents about people I knew from growing up there I was told they had gotten into "drugs". I participated in Ragbrai numerous times and can also attest that the WORST overnight town was Oelwein in 2002. I saw a town very unprepared for the event. Few food options, restaurants that ran out of food, transportation sorely lacking, poor signage, etc...It appeared that no on cared to prepare. Their seemed to be a great deal of apathy from the residents as well. Our group was also told to be careful if we chose to go to the bars, that there were a lot of "rowdy locals" and "druggies". We chose to stay in our campground.

I understand the defensiveness of the residents of Oelwein but the facts remain as Reding writes about them. The town fell tremendously from say 1970's until the 2000's.

As for the critics who point out the inaccuracies and slam the book because of them...REALLY? WOW, have you missed the point. The book is an interesting, quick read and sheds a great deal of light on a major problem.