The Least of Us: True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth

Sam Quinones

Nov 2021 · Bloomsbury Publishing USA

About this ebook

Apple Best Books of 2021
Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal * Shortlisted for the Zocalo Book Prize

From the New York Times bestselling author of Dreamland, 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 U.S. 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's award-winning Dreamland.

Ratings and reviews

Deeply impactful narrative of how narcotics have transformed the American society (and others in due course) in the past decade. If you care about the mental health crisis, the homelessness crisis, and a whole lot of issues that the left blame on capitalism, this book will get you think thinking deeply about how we can actually solve those problems.

Biden has turned a complete blind eye to this and its disgusting. A 4000% increase in fentaynl being brought over the border just this year. He's killing millions of americans and thousands of foreignors. There has been a 220% increase of deaths from illegal crosings. Not to mentions the living conditions in which the record number of illegal migrants have to endure now. The worst of all this is the fact the whole administration remains silent tp the drugs, death, and lawlessness created from the messaging recieved by democractic leaders in office and in cities on the west coast. Where they actually have decriminalized all the drugs coming over. Creating a safe haven for the drug epidemic ripping americas families. I know three sets of grandparents who had to take over custody of grandchildren from parents abusing feytnal.

Amazing and absolutely necessary to read, absorb and learn from. Bravo for both this and Dreamland

About the author

Sam Quinones is a journalist, storyteller, former LA Times reporter, and author of four acclaimed books of narrative nonfiction, including New York Times bestseller and National Book Critics Circle Award winner Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic. "The most original writer on Mexico and the border" (San Francisco Chronicle), he lives with his family in Southern California.