Here are 80 books that Methland fans have personally recommended if you like
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My name is Tim O’Leary and two of my books, Dick Cheney Shot Me in the Face–And Other Tales of Men in Pain and Men Behaving Badly, emanate from the minds of protagonists trying to do the right thing the wrong way or evil characters doing the wrong thing they believe to be right. I’m particularly drawn to those wonderful literary psychopaths that draw you in with compelling personalities, while reviling the reader with their heinous actions.
I found this book in college, and at the time, I thought it was the most unique book I had ever read.
Thompson’s “Gonzo Journalism” was fresh, funny, and thought-provoking, with a subtext of modern poetry, political activism, and a sense of humor I have never seen replicated.
'We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like, "I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive ..."'
Hunter S. Thompson is roaring down the desert highway to Las Vegas with his attorney, the Samoan, to find the dark side of the American Dream. Armed with a drug arsenal of stupendous proportions, the duo engage in a surreal succession of chemically enhanced confrontations with casino operators, police officers and assorted Middle Americans.
This stylish reissue of Hunter S. Thompson's iconic masterpiece, a controversial bestseller when…
I have expertise and a passion for this topic because I suffered from a terrible addiction to drugs for many years and was considered a hopeless case. If I can beat my addiction then anyone can!
This was another true story of someone who suffered a terrible addiction and was able to overcome it. I liked it because Jim was a regular guy and not a celebrity sharing his life story as so many of these book are. It was one of the first books that gave me inspiration to write a book. It also became a movie where Leonardo DeCaprio played Jim Carrol.
The urban classic coming-of-age story about sex, drugs, and basketball
Jim Carroll grew up to become a renowned poet and punk rocker. But in this memoir of the mid-1960s, set during his coming-of-age from 12 to 15, he was a rebellious teenager making a place and a name for himself on the unforgiving streets of New York City. During these years, he chronicled his experiences, and the result is a diary of unparalleled candor that conveys his alternately hilarious and terrifying teenage existence. Here is Carroll prowling New York City--playing basketball, hustling, stealing, getting high, getting hooked, and searching for…
I have always liked antiheroes and characters that are in some way doomed. To me, there’s something romantic about them. And over time I have come to replace the fictional protagonists of noir and horror with antiheroes from real life. With miserable authors who wrote about their own lives, where instead of gangsters or monsters, they waged battle against themselves, against their own demons and despair. Books like these have kept me company during some of the darkest periods of my life, and their unflinching honesty has inspired me to become a writer. Perhaps they can do the same for you.
The plot of this book seems simple enough. A guy goes to Vegas to drink himself to death, but whilst there, he develops a relationship with a prostitute. Now, if this were Hollywood, they’d end up eloping and starting a new life together. Yet, whilst there is indeed an excellent Hollywood adaptation of it starring Nicholas Cage, it is no less bleaker than the novel it is based on. A novel that was written by an alcoholic who killed himself and whose book was called a suicide note by his father.
Despite its sadness, however, the book is beautifully written. Aside from its doomed romance, it also has a romantic sense of being doomed, which I like.
A re-issue of John O'Brien's debut novel, a masterpiece of modern realism about the perils of addiction and love in a city of loneliness.
Leaving Las Vegas, the first novel by John O'Brien, is the disturbing and emotionally wrenching story of a woman who embraces life and a man who rejects it.
Sera is a prostitute, content with the independence and routine she has carved out for herself in a city defined by recklessness. But she is haunted by a spectre in a yellow Mercedes, a man from her past who is committed to taking control of her life again.…
It’s no wonder South Brooklyn, in the latter half of the last century, is the setting for so many remarkable dramas for both page and screen. In fact, when legendary former NYPD Detective Thomas Dades offered to make introductions to a Colombo Crime Family associate who cooperated with the federal government, I leapt at the opportunity. I was born in Greenpoint in 1971 and grew up on 16th Avenue in the heart of Bensonhurst. It’s not just South Brooklyn’s raw, urban chaotic physical setting, but the sheer volatility of this period in time, where so many transformational trends of the larger culture were evident, and some even epi-centered.
Hubert Selby Jr. delivers another dark indictment of life along the outer shores of South Brooklyn, in the form of both this 1978 novel and the grim 2000 film Darren Aronofsky film adaptation (co-written with Selby, with a cameo as prison guard).
The characters of this disturbing drama are as marginalized as the bleak 1970s backdrop they infect. Selby’s prose holds us by the back of the neck as his characters descend down awful spirals of addiction: Sara Goldfarb with her diet pills, and her son Harry, his girlfriend Marion, and his best friend Tyrone, all heroin addicts. Electroconvulsive therapy, reluctant prostitution, and amputation abound, harrowing hallmarks you’d expect from Selby.
For this trip to Coney Island, think more Warriors, less Woody Allen, and buckle up. It’s going to be a spectacularly gruesome ride.
Locations of interest: Coney Island Clam Bar; Brighton Beach Boardwalk; Surf Avenue Second-hand Shops; 3152 Brighton…
Harry Goldfarb, heroin addict and son of lonely widow Sara, cares only about enjoying the good life with girlfriend Marion and best friend Tyrone C Love, and making the most of all the hash, poppers and dope they can get. Sara Goldfarb sits at home with the TV, dreaming of the life she could have and struggling with her own addictions - food and diet pills. But these four will pay a terrible price for the pleasures they believe they are entitled to. A passionate, heart-breaking tale of the crushing weight of hope and expectation, Requiem for a Dream is…
As a historian of science and medicine, I’m fascinated by the many ways that drugs—from tea to opiates, Prozac to psychedelics—have shaped our world. After all, there are few adults on the planet today who don’t regularly consume substances that have been classified as a drug at one time or another (I’m looking at you, coffee and tea!). The books I’ve selected here have deeply influenced my own thinking on the history of drugs over the past decade, from my first book, The Age of Intoxication, to my new book on the history of psychedelic science.
If I were asked to recommend just one book on the history of drugs, this would be it. Courtwright is an expert in the history of drugs in the nineteenth and twentieth-century United States, but in this book, he zooms out—way out—to think about the larger history of humanity’s relationship to mind-altering substances.
At the book's core is Courtwright’s influential concept of a “psychoactive revolution” that influenced the histories of empire, globalization, and science over the past five centuries. I have been deeply influenced by his approach ever since I first read this book in grad school, and I use it often in my teaching.
What drives the drug trade, and how has it come to be what it is today? A global history of the acquisition of progressively more potent means of altering ordinary waking consciousness, this book is the first to provide the big picture of the discovery, interchange, and exploitation of the planet's psychoactive resources, from tea and kola to opiates and amphetamines.
Over my two decades as a scholar of American foreign policy and international politics, I had multiple opportunities to serve as a Latin America foreign policy aide. Given that Latin America plays a central role in the U.S.-hatched modern war on drugs, much of my policymaking was directly or indirectly tied to drug policy. I thus wrote Drugs and Thugs above all to make sure that I had a good sense of the history of this seemingly eternal conflict, one that is “fought” as much at home as abroad.
Decades before Netflix’s hit series Narcos, Gugliotta and Leen turned their prize-winning series of articles in The Miami Heraldinto a highly original book, Kings of Cocaine. What astounds me is how well the author’s uncovering the psychopathic violence, unimaginable profits, and political and social corruption of the Colombian cocaine trade. And this rot and bloodshed were not just occurring in the less developed Colombia but right inside Ronald Reagan’s America.
This is the story of the most successful cocaine dealers in the world: Pablo Escobar Gaviria, Jorge Luis Ochoa Vasquez, Carlos Lehder Rivas and Jose Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha. In the 1980s they controlled more than fifty percent of the cocaine flowing into the United States. The cocaine trade is capitalism on overdrive -- supply meeting demand on exponential levels. Here you'll find the story of how the modern cocaine business started and how it turned a rag tag group of hippies and sociopaths into regal kings as they stumbled from small-time suitcase smuggling to levels of unimaginable sophistication and daring.…
Over my two decades as a scholar of American foreign policy and international politics, I had multiple opportunities to serve as a Latin America foreign policy aide. Given that Latin America plays a central role in the U.S.-hatched modern war on drugs, much of my policymaking was directly or indirectly tied to drug policy. I thus wrote Drugs and Thugs above all to make sure that I had a good sense of the history of this seemingly eternal conflict, one that is “fought” as much at home as abroad.
A work of intrepid journalism and sizzling writing, Grillo’sEl Narco is the result of upwards of a decade following the mercurial, terrifying evolution of Mexico’s drug cartels. I’ve taught this book to my Davidson College students studying Latin American politics and they repeatedly tell me that it is their favorite book they tackle in the course.
'War' is no exaggeration in discussing the bloodshed that has terrorized Mexico in the past decades. As rival cartels battle for control of a billion-dollar drug trade, the body count- 23,000 dead in five years - and sheer horror beggar the imagination of journalistic witnesses. Cartel gunmen have shot up schools and rehabilitation centers, and murdered the entire families of those who defy them. Reformers and law enforcement officials have been gunned down within hours of taking office. Headless corpses are dumped on streets to intimidate rivals, and severed heads are rolled onto dancefloors as messages to would-be opponents. And…
Over my two decades as a scholar of American foreign policy and international politics, I had multiple opportunities to serve as a Latin America foreign policy aide. Given that Latin America plays a central role in the U.S.-hatched modern war on drugs, much of my policymaking was directly or indirectly tied to drug policy. I thus wrote Drugs and Thugs above all to make sure that I had a good sense of the history of this seemingly eternal conflict, one that is “fought” as much at home as abroad.
Hari’s Chasing the Scream is not an exhaustively researched book but it still merits listing given how viscerally the author addresses the history of the global war on drugs in the light of his own personal addiction. Hari shines in his depiction of circa 1930s U.S. Drug Cop #1, Henry J. Anslinger, who, among other dubious endeavors, sought to throw the book at jazz singer Billie Holiday, who also happened to be a heroin addict.
What if everything you think you know about addiction is wrong? Johann Hari's journey into the heart of the war on drugs led him to ask this question--and to write the book that gave rise to his viral TED talk, viewed more than 62 million times, and inspired the feature film The United States vs. Billie Holiday and the documentary series The Fix.
One of Johann Hari's earliest memories is of trying to wake up one of his relatives and not being able to. As he grew older, he realized he had addiction in his…
As the author of more than 50 works of warm, witty historical romance, I love seeking out stories that will make me smile. I’m a firm believer in happy endings, in the books I write, and the books I read. I’m also a bit obsessed with history, having driven a carriage four-in-hand, learned to fence, and sailed on a tall ship, all in the name of research.
There’s nothing like the antics of a pet to bring a lady and a gentleman together. A beloved dog with the improbable name of Honeysuckle does just that in this charming novel. A letter that ended up at the Dead Letter Office leads Honey’s pretty owner to a small town in Iowa to find the man who writes words she can’t forget. You’ll find yourself remembering them too.
For three years, Penny Ercanbeck has been opening other people's mail. Dead ends are a reality for clerks at the Dead Letter Office. Still she dreams of something more--a bit of intrigue, a taste of romance, or at least a touch less loneliness. When a letter from a brokenhearted man to his one true love falls into her hands, Penny seizes this chance to do something heroic. It becomes her mission to place this lost letter into the hands of its intended recipient.
Thomas left his former life with no intention of ending up in Azure Springs, Iowa. He certainly…
Having moved almost twenty times in my life, I have a passion for home – finding home, creating home, and enjoying home no matter where you land. My personal space is filled with books, my favorites being about homecomings and safe places of peace and restoration. Home fills me with joy and is a theme in each of the historical novels I write. Everyone should have the haven of a home, both here and now and eternally.
A Song of Years captures all of the struggle and angst of carving out a home from pure, unspoiled Iowa prairie by those bold pioneers who risked everything to do so. While reading, I became the heroine, Abby Deal, as she sacrificed and struggled to wrest a life and create a home from the frontier that challenged her and her family at every turn. Realistic, even epic, this 1939 novel is on my keeper shelf.
The state of Iowa was still young and wild when Wayne Lockwood came to it from New England in 1851. He claimed a quarter-section about a hundred miles west of Dubuque and quickly came to appreciate widely scattered neighbors like Jeremiah Martin, whose seven daughters would have chased the gloom from any bachelor's heart. Sabina, Emily, Celia, Melinda, Phoebe Lou, Jeanie, and Suzanne are timeless in their appeal-too spirited to be preoccupied with sermons, sickness, and sudden death. However, the feasts, weddings, and holiday celebrations in Song of Years are shadowed by all the rigors and perils of frontier living.…
