A Review of Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town

I gakked this from Hal­vard John­son on Face­book. Not the meth, the review, dummy.

Let's hope it's theft he doesn't mind. It is the NY Times after all.

By WALTER KIRN

Pub­lished: July 1, 2009 

Think glob­al­ly, suf­fer local­ly. This could be the moral of “Meth­land,” Nick Reding’s unnerv­ing inves­tiga­tive account of two grue­some years in the life of Oel­wein, Iowa, a rail­road and meat­pack­ing town of sev­er­al thou­sand whipped by a metham­phet­a­mine-laced pan­ic whose ori­gins lie out­side the place itself, in forces almost too great to com­pre­hend and too piti­less to bear. The rav­ages of meth, or “crank,” on Oel­wein and count­less for­sak­en locales much like it are shown to be mere­ly super­fi­cial symp­toms of a vaster social demen­tia caused by, among oth­er things, the iron domin­ion of cor­po­rate agri­cul­ture and the slow melt­ing of vil­lages and fam­i­lies into the world­wide finan­cial stew.

More from the Times

This is hap­pen­ing as well in the Twin Tiers, the area where I grew up, par­tic­u­lar­ly in Brad­ford Coun­ty PA, whose coun­ty seat, Newsweek claimed a few years ago, is yet anoth­er Meth Val­ley.

They're EVERYWHERE, folks! Gitch­er own.