Review of : Methland by Nick Reding

Apparently, after reading some reviews by some native Iowans (is that what they call themselves?) there are a few factual inaccuracies throughout the book, such as Iowa City is not the largest city in Iowa, or that The University of Northern Iowa is in Cedar Falls, not Cedar Rapids. For the most part, I don't care. These facts aren't really relevant to the whole story BUT they do chip away at Reding's credibilty as a reporter...but I'm sure these kind of mistakes will be fixed come the paperback edition.

As with any reportage of this type, one which the book industry seems to be saturated by, you can't go taking everything the author says as The Truth. You have to view it as a version of The Truth that helps (hopefully) create a better understanding of the subject in question and (hopefully) creates a 'national dialogue'. So this is Nick Reding's version of rural America, of the Meth problem in those areas, and of Oelwein, IA.

This is a very human centered story. Reding devotes just as much time to understanding meth and the DTO's (Drug Trafficking Organization) as he does to the people whose lives are effected by them. So if you're going in expecting a meth-soaked narrrative, you might be a little bit disappointed. That is not to say that meth is not present on every page, because it is, but in a more atmospheric way. I guess I was looking forward to understanding more about meth as drug and I came away with a vague understanding but nothing incredibly concrete. And that has more to do with my expectations than it does with Reding's execution as a writer, because I'm sure he intended to devote a lot of narrative space to these people he befriended and whose lives he saw crippled by meth.

But I don't want to sell Reding short. He does a damn good job explaining the history of meth and it's ever changing distribution and manufacturing. Sometimes I felt he bit off a little more than he could chew, narratively, as he tried connecting all the pieces that come into play when talking about a major drug like meth. He starts off talking about rural America, then economic turmoil, then meth, then big agriculture, then Monsanto and Cargill (of which his father was a vice chairmen, which was a neat twist), then the meat industry, then DTO's, then legislation, then pharmaceutical lobbyists, then insurance companies, etc, etc. I'm not saying this isn't all important because it most certainly is if a reader wanted the whole picture. But I felt Reding didn't devote enough space to all the pieces of the puzzle. The book needed to be twice as long as it was to form a proper, coherent narrative. So that's kinda positive criticism: I wanted more. After all this unnecessary nitpicking, I recommend this book.

Also, it reinforced the idea that, yet again, Big Pharma is evil, evil, evil.