Reviews - Riverside Public Library

Booklist Reviews

*Starred Review* Heroin addiction has evolved from back-alley ghettos to suburban shopping malls, changing hearts and minds about how it is perceived and how it should be treated. That evolution pivots on a decision by Purdue Pharma to aggressively market OxyContin and efforts by Mexican drug traffickers to push black-tar heroin. In the 1990s, both highly addictive drugs flooded the markets in middle-class neighborhoods. OxyContin benefited from changes in philosophy on pain treatment and from worry about addiction that prevented even cancer patients from getting pain relief to the more freewheeling idea that pain relief is a human right. Unscrupulous doctors operated "pill mills," prescribing OxyContin for dubious reasons and huge fees. Middle-class professionals, workers, and students found themselves easy targets for sellers of black tar, semi-processed opium produced in Mexico and sold by eager bands of drug crews. Like pizza deliverymen, the crews offered speedy delivery and good customer service. The distribution, centered in a small Mexican village and spread throughout the U.S. in midsize towns and cities, defied the typical profile of a drug cartel. Journalist Quinones weaves an extraordinary story, including the personal journeys of the addicted, the drug traffickers, law enforcement, and scores of families affected by the scourge, as he details the social, economic, and political forces that eventually destroyed communities in the American heartland and continues to have a resounding impact. Copyright 2014 Booklist Reviews.

Booklist Reviews

This young adult adaptation of 2015's widely acclaimed study of the opioid crisis begins in 1929 with Portsmouth, Ohio, where the community hub was once a swimming pool called Dreamland. From there, we are taken on a carefully researched journey through America and beyond, as anecdotal stories show how the epidemic has overrun small towns and suburbs throughout the country. Quinones lays out a historical narrative, tracing the use of opiates in medicine, detailing how a pharmaceutical company found a legal way to produce more addicts, and explaining why government research has been percolating so long. He examines the struggle of law enforcement to quell this disaster, as well as the various solutions still being considered, from reforming drug laws to finding ways to help recovering addicts. This riveting tale will introduce readers to the tiny Mexican state of Nayarit, the heart of the crisis, where a small town of nonviolent drug dealers has shaped the face of this critical period in American history. Grades 8-12. Copyright 2019 Booklist Reviews.

Kirkus Reviews

Discouraging, unflinching dispatches from America's enduring opiate-abuse epidemic. Veteran freelance journalist Quinones (Antonio's Gun and Delfino's Dream: True Tales of Mexican Migration, 2007, etc.) cogently captures the essence of the festering war on drugs throughout the 1990s. He focuses on the market for black tar heroin, a cheap, potent, semiprocessed drug smuggled into the United States from Nayarit, a state on the Pacific coast of Mexico. The author charts its dissemination throughout American heartland cities like Columbus and Portsmouth, Ohio, home to a huge, family-friendly swimming pool named Dreamland, which closed in 1993, after which opiates "made easy work of a landscape stripped of any communal girding." Assembling history through varying locales and personal portraits, Quinones follows a palpable trail of heartbreak, misery and the eventual demise of seemingly harmless people "shape-shifted into lying, thieving slaves to an unseen molecule." The author pr ovides an insider's glimpse into the drug trade machine, examining the evolution of medical narcotic destigmatization, the OxyContin-heroin correlation and the machinations of manipulative pharmaceutical companies. His profiles include a West Virginia father burying his overdosed son, a diabolically resourceful drug dealer dubbed "the Man," and "Enrique," a Mexican citizen who entered the drug trade as a dealer for his uncle at 14. Perhaps most intriguing is the author's vivid dissection of the "cross-cultural heroin deal," consisting of an interconnected, hive-minded "retail system" of telephone operators, dealers (popularly known as the "Xalisco Boys") and customers; everything is efficiently and covertly marketed "like a pizza delivery service" and franchised nationwide with precision. The author's text, the result of a five-year endeavor of remote research and in-person interviews, offers a sweeping vantage point of the nation's ever expanding drug problem. Though initia l ly disjointed, these frustrating and undeniably disheartening scenarios eventually dovetail into a disturbing tapestry of abuse, addiction and death. Thankfully, for a fortunate few, rebirth is possible. A compellingly investigated, relentlessly gloomy report on the drug distribution industry. Copyright Kirkus 2015 Kirkus/BPI Communications.All rights reserved.

Kirkus Reviews

In this young adult adaptation of his adult title Dreamland (2015), seasoned journalist Quinones narrates a fast-paced exposé of the opiate epidemic. The story begins and ends in Portsmouth, Ohio, a leader in both societal decline due to addiction and, years later, hope for recovering addicts. Quinones lays out the causes of the epidemic as if bringing together puzzle pieces. Purdue Pharma's ad campaign targeting physicians downplayed the addictive nature of painkillers; physicians overprescribed them, most—but not all—with sincere intentions of helping their patients. A seemingly endless stream of Mexican drug dealers sought out the addict population as customers for their imported black tar heroin, which provided the same euphoria but with less cost and inconvenience. Presented as victims are the addicts—predominantly white families, at first poor and rural, later from privileged backgrounds. The efforts of law enforcement and public health officials to tackle the problem are detailed. Personal profiles crafted from interviews keep things interesting, and the technical descriptions of the various drug f orms and the history of opiates are informative. Although the author describes the radical about-face by lawmakers who took a "tough on crime" approach to drugs when victims were predominantly black, readers may finish the book with the impression that Mexicans have wreaked havoc on innocent white lives. A scrupulously researched, well-crafted tale that sheds light on a timely topic. (epilogue, photographs, reading guide, source notes) (Nonfiction. 12-18) Copyright Kirkus 2019 Kirkus/BPI Communications. All rights reserved.

Library Journal Reviews

In the 1990s, pain medications were on their way to hooking millions of Americans, and black-tar heroin, a cheap and powerful form of the drug produced in Mexico independent of the drug cartels, began devastating small heartland communities throughout the country. Former Los Angeles Times reporter Quinones pairs the two phenomena as a study in addiction, the power of overwhelmingly persuasive marketing, and a huge social problem in America today.

Publishers Weekly Reviews

In this fascinating, often horrifying investigation, journalist Quinones (True Tales from Another Mexico) delves into the heart of America's obsession with opiates like heroin, morphine, and OxyContin. He looks at how aggressive marketing and irresponsible business tactics led to the widespread use of addictive prescription painkillers (especially OxyContin) and how Mexican drug cartels introduced black tar heroin into small towns and vulnerable areas around the U.S. The story of the so-called Xalisco Boys, the source of so much misery and exploitation, unfolds with grim efficiency under Quinone's scrutiny. He doesn't hold back as he describes how widespread addiction and pill mills devastated entire communities, such as the blue-collar city of Portsmouth, Ohio. Through extensive interviews and research, Quinone gives a very human perspective to this topic, telling the tales of addicts and pushers, researchers and cops alike. While some of the threads become repetitive, this remains a harrowing, eye-opening look at two sides of the same coin, the legal and illegal faces of addictive painkillers and their insidious power. Agent: Stephany Evans, FinePrint Literary Management. (Apr.)

Voice of Youth Advocates Reviews

British illustrator Riddell provides pencil drawings in response to forty-eight poems that are meaningful to him. This eclectic anthology organizes poetry into the categories of musings, youth, family, love, imaginings, nature, war, and endings. Selected poems span centuries, from William Shakespeare to Paul Laurence Dunbar, from Gerald Manley Hopkins to Dame Carol Ann Duffy, and include song lyrics by Leonard Cohen, Nick Cave, and Phoebe Bridgers. Drawings vary from sketches to detailed depictions. Particularly impressive illustrations for the section on imaginings encompass "Jabberwocky" by Lewis Carroll; "The Lady of Shallott" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson; two texts by Neil Gaiman; and more. Criticisms could be made that the selections skew toward male and United Kingdom authors and that important categories of life seem omitted, like faith and justice. But Poems to Live Your Life By is perhaps best appreciated as reflecting the interests and style of Riddell, an acclaimed artist and editorial cartoonist. The one poem written by Riddell, "The Great Escape," explores a moment from his youth. Engaging adolescents in ways to appreciate poetry has value, and this book has classroom applications by providing mentor texts for students' own poetry writing and artistic responses to literature. Finally, this illustrated anthology includes many classic poems that reward repeated readings and presenting aloud, such as "Digging" by Seamus Heaney and "Because I Could Not Stop for Death" by Emily Dickinson.—Amy Cummins. 4Q 3P J S Copyright 2020 Voya Reviews.