“Miles Gone By” is a good, but somewhat disorienting, book. It’s disorienting, first, because it’s disjointed—while divided into chapters covering different topics, it’s actually composed entirely of previously published pieces, without any attempt to knit them together coherently, in time or theme, as would be usual in an autobiography. The result isn’t bad, it’s just different, and that’s disorienting.
Anne-Marie Slaughter’s book is compelling. But too frequently it relies on unsupported, and in fact unvoiced, assumptions. And like a stick figure with one leg, the result is instability.
“Dreamland” is about opiate addition, and about an America most of us don’t see. Those most affected by the explosion in opiate use chronicled in “Dreamland” are members of the white underclass, a group with no champions and no power, and therefore little focus on its problems. To the extent it affects those not in the white underclass, the addiction is frequently hidden. Either way, we see little of it. Quinones forces this America forward and explains it. And he simultaneously shows how this America is the bastard child of unfettered welfare and private greed, midwifed by the decayed culture of our time.
This is just not a very good book. It’s not a dreadful book. Just not very good. True, it’s better than most modern apocalyptic fiction, but that’s a low bar. And true, it has to compete with Fortschen’s previous book, “One Second After,” which was fantastic. But nonetheless, it’s not a very good book.
