View source for Methland

{{short description|2009 book by Nick Reding}}
{{Infobox book | <!-- See [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Novels]] or [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Books]] -->
| name          = Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town
| title_orig    =
| translator    =
| image         = Methland.jpg
| caption = First edition
| author        = [[Nick Reding (journalist)|Nick Reding]]
| illustrator   =
| cover_artist  =
| country       = [[United States]]
| language      = [[English language|English]]
| series        =
| genre         = [[Nonfiction]]
| publisher     = [[Bloomsbury USA]]
| release_date  = June 2009
| english_release_date =
| media_type    = Print ([[Hardcover]])
| pages         =
| isbn          = 978-1-59691-650-0
| dewey= 362.29/9 22
| congress= HV5831.I8 R43 2009
| oclc= 263147011
| preceded_by   =
| followed_by   =
}}
'''''Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town''''' is a book by [[Nick Reding (journalist)|Nick Reding]] which documents the drug culture of [[Oelwein, Iowa]] and how it ties into larger issues of [[rural flight]] and small town economic decline placed in the historic context of the drug trade, particularly the manufacture and consumption of [[methamphetamine]].
==Summary==
Between 2005 and 2007 the author traveled through small-town America to study the impact and cause of methamphetamine abuse. His focus is Oelwein, a once thriving small town that started to suffer economically by the end of the century. He analyzes the causes of the rural economic decline: in the context of [[deregulation]] and [[globalization]] agricultural conglomerates have taken over local businesses. As a result, jobs have disappeared, towns became depopulated, and tax revenue shrunk. Use of meth proliferated in response in the depressed areas. In Iowa, in 2004 it was mostly produced locally using cold medicine as the [[drug precursor]]. That year Iowa law enforcement closed 1,370 meth labs (page 29). When, after a long delay, cold medicine became more restricted as a precursor material, Mexican operatives moved in. With superlabs in Mexico, drug lords used illegal immigrants hired as cheap labor by agricultural conglomerates as distributors for their networks. Reding notes that the 2006 [[Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act of 2005|Combat Meth Act]] had been watered down by pharmaceutical lobbyists so that local meth labs were also able to recover from their decline and evolve.
==Reception==
While Reding's book received positive reviews from the ''[[New York Times]]'' Sunday Book Review<ref>{{cite news|first=Walter|last=Kirin|title=Wasted Land|newspaper=New York Times Sunday Book Review|date=July 2009 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/05/books/review/Kirn-t.html}}</ref> and ''[[Washington Post]]''{{'}}s Book World,<ref>{{cite news|first=David|last=Liss|title=Heartbreak in the Heartland|newspaper=The Washington Post|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/12/AR2009061201403.html}}</ref> it was severely criticized by [[Cedar Rapids, Iowa|Cedar Rapids]] columnist Laura Behrens, who wrote, "it is so ridden with errors of basic reporting that the credibility of its larger premises is crippled", pointing out several factual errors.<ref>{{cite news|first=Laura|last=Behrens|title=Holes in 'Methland' unforgivable|page=4A|newspaper=Cedar Rapids Gazette|date=July 24, 2009|url=https://newspaperarchive.com/cedar-rapids-gazette-jul-24-2009-p-4/|via=Newspaper Archive}}</ref> Scott Martelle from the ''[[Los Angeles Times]]'' writes that "Reding 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."<ref>{{cite news| url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2009-jun-08-et-book8-story.html |first=Scott|last=Martelle |title=The small-town nightmare of 'Methland'. Methland; The Death and Life of an American Small Town; Nick Reding |newspaper=Los Angeles Times |date=June 8, 2009| access-date=September 3, 2013}}</ref>
==References==
{{Reflist}}
[[Category:2009 non-fiction books]]
[[Category:Non-fiction books about drugs]]
[[Category:Methamphetamine in the United States]]
[[Category:Crime in Iowa]]
[[Category:American non-fiction books]]