Methland
The Death and Life of an American Small Town
By Nick Reding
June 2009
$25.00
272 pp
6.125 x 9.25 in
Hardcover
By Nick Reding
New York Times Bestseller
Now Available in Paperback!
The dramatic story of Methamphetamine as it comes to the American Heartland—a timely, moving, very human account of one community's attempt to confront the epidemic and see their way to a brighter future.
Crystal methamphetamine is widely considered to be the most dangerous drug in the world, and nowhere is that more true than in the small towns of the American heartland. Methland is the story of the drug as it infiltrates the community of Oelwein, Iowa (pop. 6,159), a once-thriving farming and railroad community. Tracing the connections between the lives touched by meth and the global forces that have set the stage for the epidemic, Methland offers a vital and unique perspective on a pressing contemporary tragedy.
Oelwein, Iowa, is like thousands of other small towns across the county. It has been left in the dust by the consolidation of the agricultural industry, a depressed local economy and an out-migration of people. If this wasn't enough to deal with, an incredibly cheap, long-lasting, and highly addictive drug has come to town, touching virtually everyone's lives. Journalist Nick Reding reported this story over a period of four years, and he brings us into the heart of the town through an ensemble cast of intimately drawn characters, including: Clay Hallburg, the town doctor, who fights meth even as he struggles with his own alcoholism; Nathan Lein, the town prosecutor, whose case load is filled almost exclusively with meth-related crime, and Roland Jarvis, who is still trying to kick a meth habit after four years.
Methland is a portrait of a community under siege, of the lives the drug has devastated, and of the heroes who continue to fight the war. It will appeal to readers of David Sheff's bestselling Beautiful Boy, and serve as inspiration for those who believe in the power of everyday people to change their world for the better.
Reviews for Methland
Methland makes the St. Louis Post Dispatch's best of list for the year.
More love from the Chicago Tribune.
Here's a Q&A with Nick in the December issue of Guernica magazine.
"Winner of this year's Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize for Non-Fiction, Nick Reding's wonderful book, "Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town," evokes elements of "Winesburg, Ohio" in its depiction of small-town life, but with a very modern twist."—Chicago Tribune. Read article about Methland winning the Heartland Prize.
“The book, wrought from old-fashioned shoe-leather reporting of a type that’s disappearing faster than nonfranchised lunch counters on Main Street, isn’t chiefly a tale of drugs and crime, of dysfunction and despair, but a recession-era tragedy scaled for an “Our Town,” Thornton Wilder stage and seemingly based on a script by William S. Burroughs. In the tradition of James Agee’s writings on Depression-era sharecroppers, Reding displays the faces of the damned in broken-capillary close-ups. Too many scenes of sulfurous agony might chase away the most calloused, ambitious reader, so Reding recounts these nightmares sparingly, surrounding them with stretches of patient journalism.”—Walter Kirn, Sunday New York Times Book Review, cover story.
Review pickup in The Boston Globe, read review.
Timothy Egan’s New York Times OpEd also appeared in his New York Times blog “Outposts”.
"In the 1930s, doctors touted methamphetamine as a miracle drug "that would end the need for all others." Today it's one of the most addictive and dangerous narcotics in the world. In this case study, journalist Nick Reding examines how the meth epidemic decimated Oelwein, Iowa (pop. 6,159), where police at one point were dismantling two crank labs a week. For Reding, who spent four years reporting among Oelwein's addicts, officials and residents, the drug is more than just a small-town scourge. Meth, he writes, is a metaphor for the "cataclysmic fault lines formed by globalization." After agribusiness bought out local farmers, the once booming town declined, and its inhabitants turned to meth's "biochemical ecstasy" to stay awake during double shifts, feel alive after clocking out or make ends meet by brewing their own batches. Rural America's addiction to meth is "as much about the death of a way of life as it is about the birth of a drug," he notes. After all, for those with low-paying jobs, little money and no prospects, there's not much left to feel good about."—Time Magazine, 
Read this book!
“The strength of "Methland" lies in its character studies. As a "social problem" meth is dull and intractable, as are all such problems; reduced, or rather elevated, to the individual level, it is piercing and poignant. Mr. Reding's heart is in the right place.”—Wall Street Journal, Read full review.
An interview and excerpt fromAll Things Considered/NPR may be viewed here. A link to Nick’s “All Things Considered” interview on Meth News blog.
Here's a feature in the Denver Post.
A Q&A with Nick (in two installments) on indenvertimes.com: Installment #1 and Installment #2.
A KPBS (San Diego NPR) interview.
A blog post on the PostStar.com (Glens Falls, NY).
Methland is included in a fall book round up in the Salt Lake City Tribune.
A piece on InDenverTimes.
A feature in VUE Weekly.
“Gripping and heartbreaking… With both anecdotal accounts and some solid reporting, Reding places meth in its appropriate cultural and economic context - portraying it as not so much a cause but a symptom of the decline of towns like Oelwein all across the flyover zone that is the nation's interior.” “This isn't just a story about one Iowa city and its war against drugs. Instead, this is a book about the everyday fight against drugs all over rural America.”— Charleston Gazette (WV), Read full review.
“What’s most impressive about Methland is not only the wealth of information it provides but the depth of Reding’s compassion for the individuals meth has touched: the heroes, the helpless witnesses, the innocent victims—and even the perpetrators—of this American crisis.”—Francine Prose, Oprah magazine.
METHLAND in New York Magazine’s “What to Read on Vacation”.
Associated Press story picked up by the following:
St. Louis Post Dispatch’s book blog
North Pennsylvania’s The Reporter
“Gripping and heartbreaking… With both anecdotal accounts and some solid reporting, Reding places meth in its appropriate cultural and economic context - portraying it as not so much a cause but a symptom of the decline of towns like Oelwein all across the flyover zone that is the nation's interior.”—Commercial Appeal, Memphis, TN
“Reding’s group portrait of Oelwein’s residents is nuanced and complex in a way that journalists’ depictions of the rural Midwest rarely are; he has a keen eye for details.”—Washington Monthly.
Review pickup in The Chicago Tribune. Read review.
“This is a strong book, and it tells a complicated story in comprehensible, human dimensions. Like all good journalism, it's the hand holding up the mirror, the friend telling us to take a cold, hard look at ourselves…Reding cleanly dissects the failed and ill-conceived efforts of the U.S. government to intervene in the meth epidemic… [He] neither romanticizes nor moralizes. Instead, he opens a window onto a disturbing landscape that we might not want to see, but that we can't avoid.” —Los Angeles Times.
“Persuasive…"Methland" makes the case that small-town America is perhaps not the moral and hard-working place of the public imagination, but it also argues that big-city ignorance -- fueled by the media -- toward small-town decay is both dangerous and appalling.”—Washington Post. Read full review. This review was also picked up by the Austin-American Statesman, the Atlanta Journal Constitution, and The Miami Herald.
Review of METHLAND in the San Francisco Chronicle.
National Review’s “Between the Covers” podcast with Nick Reding.
Review from the Portland Oregonian.
Review from the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
“METHLAND is the story of a different kind of drug war: one waged closer to the bone in rural America than in urban centers. One involving a drug widely prescribed historically, as an appetite suppressant and anti-depressive. One that might have been thwarted legislatively but for lobbying by the pharmaceutical industry. Reding's documentation of this is solid and shocking. Encompassing and compelling.”— Hartford Courant. Read full review.
“This is a horrifying book. It has images in it indescribable in a family newspaper. It is about methamphetamine, the people who make it, sell it and use it, and the people who thwart them…This is an engaging book. The style is smooth, the description vivid.”—Seattle Times. Read full review.
“METHLAND gracefully moves from drug addiction to globalization, from Big Agriculture to Big Pharmaceutical, always with the goal of better understanding ‘the twenty-eight landlocked states of the American flyover zone.’ Ambitious and important…[Reding]'s written and reported an excellent book.”—Bookslut.
“For folks like me, who live outside the drug culture, the conventional wisdom has sounded intriguing in a depressing way. But I had never truly grasped the real story until reading Nick Reding's "Methland." By practicing immersion journalism in two Midwestern towns, Reding makes the destruction come alive. Meth is no longer an abstraction for me.”—St. Louis Post Dispatch. Read full review.
“[Methland] is a stunning look at a problem that has dire consequences for our country.”—New York Post. Read full review.
“The book is a fast and furious read, but it is also a compelling economic analysis of how meth gained ground in American society. Reding has a light touch, and he never hammers the reader with his politics, but it is clear he links the depth and breadth of meth in America to the concentration of wealth and the decline of social services beginning in the 1980s. It’s kind of hard to argue that he’s wrong. Dig it.”—Contemporary Nomad. Read full review.
"It's estimated that more than 26 million people worldwide are addicted to crystal meth—widely considered to be the most dangerous drug on earth. Nick Reding—whose previous book, The Last Cowboys at the End of the World, documented the death of the Patagonian gaucho's way of life—spent four years in Oelwein, Iowa (pop. 6,159), documenting the town's meth-influenced decline. Through scrupulous reporting and fierce moral engagement, he conveys the tragedy of the meth epidemic on both a micro- and macroscopic level."—Village Voice
"Nick Reding’s journey into METHLAND (Bloomsbury) uncovers small Iowa towns overrun with crankheads clawing their way to recovery."—Hot Type, Vanity Fair
“The most popular substance brewed in bathtubs since twenties gin, meth has transformed the wholesome image of small-town America into that of a tweaker’s paradise. Avoiding moral panic, Nick Reding traces the rise of crank with portraits of an Iowa town’s users, dealers, and influence-resisting citizens, telling a story less about crime than about the death of an iconic way of life.”—Details
“Reding is no morality propagandist—more of a Marxist sharpshooter—and his compassion for the subjects of his study is impressive. The writing is always rich in insight… Methland is a book of sociology, testament, and inquiry, wistfully wondering what consigned small town America to the hell of addiction, and how exactly we might rescue it.” —Brooklyn Rail, Read full review.
"Methland" by Nick Reding (Bloomsbury, June 9). St. Louisan examines the meth-riddled Midwest by focusing on the drug's effects in a small farm town in Iowa. St. Louis Post Dispatch’s Summer Books Round Up.
"Using what he calls a “live-in reporting strategy,” Reding’s chronicle of a small-town crystal meth epidemic—about “the death of a way of life as much as... about the birth of a drug”—revolves around tiny Oelwein, Iowa, a 6,000-resident farming town nearly destroyed by the one-two punch of Big Agriculture modernization and skyrocketing meth production. Reding's wide cast of characters includes a family doctor, the man “in the best possible position from which to observe the meth phenomenon”; an addict who blew up his mother’s house while cooking the stuff; and Lori Arnold (sister of actor Tom Arnold) who, as a teenager, built an extensive and wildly profitable crank empire in Ottumwa, Iowa (not once, but twice). Reding is at his best relating the bizarre, violent and disturbing stories from four years of research; heftier topics like big business and globalization, although fascinating, seem just out of Reding's weight class. A fascinating read for those with the stomach for it, Reding's unflinching look at a drug's rampage through the heartland stands out in an increasingly crowded field."—Publishers Weekly
"A thoughtful exploration of the methamphetamine epidemic in the context of small-town America, this work centers on tiny Oelwein, IA, a microcosm of the devastating dynamic among rural life, economic instability, and meth. Reding (The Last Cowboys at the End of the World ) studies macro-level forces, from the international drug trade to the influence of interest groups on U.S. regulatory activity. He traces the allure of meth production and consumption, faulting economic disadvantage and, in turn, the consolidation of the American food industry (crucial to Oelwein's troubles was the merger, and then closing, of a meatpacking plant). The book's power derives, however, from the immediacy and everyday reality of one small town, where Reding immerses himself, spending months with several heroic if hardly perfect residents-the doctor, prosecutor, and mayor-and two local meth addicts. With personal ties to the rural Midwest and to addiction, Reding is sympathetic and humane. He leaves Oelwein in the midst of a fragile but hopeful renaissance, with a new industrial park, library, and expanded downtown. The awareness remains that ruin can arrive anytime, by means of a drug that can be made in a kitchen sink. Recommended for general readers."—Library Journal
"...Reding relates how Lein and a few other local heroes determinedly fought back and reclaimed the town locals were calling Methlehem. Oelwein’s story has implications for other rural areas, especially in the Midwest, West, and South, where Reding’s tale should be vital cautionary reading."—Mike Tribby, Booklist
“Nightmarish story of methamphetamine in rural America. First synthesized in 1898, methamphetamine was long marketed legally in the United States. Despite its “anti-social” side effects, the drug was used by soldiers, truckers and others who wanted to stay alert, until the early 1980s, when bike gangs began making a purer form—crank—illegally. In this richly textured account, Reding (The Last Cowboys at the End of the World: The Story of the Gouchos of Patagonia, 2001) traces the astonishing rise of meth use across the Midwest, focusing on Oelwein, an Iowa railroad town (pop. 6,772) that by 2005 had been “destroyed” by the drug. Wracked by poverty, unemployment and farm failures, the town’s major growth industry has been meth, which can be made cheaply in bathtubs from easily available ingredients—mainly cold medications from pharmacies and anhydrous ammonia obtained from farmers. Reding vividly re-creates the despair of a place overtaken by meth—its storefronts boarded, its frequently exploding meth labs belching toxins, its streets used to manufacture meth in bottles strapped to mountain bikes, its Do Drop Inn transformed into a meeting place for addicts. Among the many memorable characters are Roland Jarvis, a 20-year addict; Dr. Clay Hallberg, a general practitioner who treats the psychological and medical devastation wrought by meth (his own drug of choice is alcohol); Nathan Lein, a prosecutor hired to clean things up; and Mayor Larry Murphy, who revitalizes downtown streets but fears for Oelwein’s future. The author describes the forces that have made the Midwest ground zero for meth use, including the meat-packing industry, whose illegal workers distribute the more powerful “crystal meth” manufactured by Mexican groups. Reding also shows how pharmaceutical-industry lobbyists blocked anti-meth legislation until passage of the Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act of 2005—though even that act fails to prevent meth makers from obtaining cold medications at drugstores. CVS clerks are often in cahoots with the crooks, he writes. An important report on an extremely dangerous drug and the consequences of addiction."—Kirkus Reviews
Front page cover story on METHLAND in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Read all about it.
Some upcoming radio...
He’ll tape an interview with WMUA’s “Writer’s Voice” (also airs on local NPR affiliate WNNZ, and nationally on Pacifica Network stations) on August 23rd.
Nick will appear live on WFMP Talk Radio on August 26th at 5:30 p.m. EST.
KCUR’s “Up to Date” (Kansas City, MO NPR)
Some radio broadcasts done...
Nick appeared live on KUCI-FM’s “Writers on Writing” show on July 29th at noon EST.
He’ll also did a live interview with “Late Night Live” on ABC Radio National in Australia on July 29th.
Nick did a live half hour interview on “The Jeff Farias Show” on KXXT in Phoenix, AZ on Monday, August 10th
Nick Reding taped an interview with Baltimore’s WBAL, July 8th
Nick Reding did a live, hour long interview on METHLAND on WILL’s “Afternoon Magazine” on Friday, July 10th
“The Bob Edwards Show” (XM Radio) on Tuesday, July 14th.
WAMC (Albany, NY NPR) “Round Table” on Thursday, July 16th.
Nick appeared live on XM Radio’s “The Michelangelo Signorile Show” on August 12 at 3:30 p.m. EST.
Blog coverage:
Q&A on Phawker.com.
Timothy Egan’s New York Times piece “Methland vs. Mythland” is getting picked up by bloggers—SocraticGadfly, Vox Verax, November.org, Silobreaker, BusinessWeek.com
Psychjourney podcast interview.
WBUR “On Point” interview.
A great Q&A with Nick on Huffington Post "At times harrowing, at times infuriating, Methland is an elegy, not a eulogy. The book shows that dedicated citizens can have a positive impact in the face of monumental obstacles.” Read full post.
A great feature on METHLAND on Bill Bishop’s The Daily Yonder. A sample, “Methland is about human will and civic survival, about the strength that can be found in a town despite a world that would just as soon see it disappear.”
Listen to a Radio Iowa piece about Nick’s visit to Oelwein.
Local newpapers:
A story in the Oelwein Daily Register Read story.
An editorial by the same paper Read editorial.
Blog coverage:
Another piece from the Oelwein Daily Register.
A feature on METHLAND in the Dubuque Telegraph Herald .
Mention in the Read review.
The Daily Iowan Read review.
