Journalist Owen takes readers on a trip into the world(s) of methamphetamines, from the cook houses in rural and small-town Missouri to latter-day suppliers in Mexico to users across America. In this highly personal travelog of meth making, selling, using, and abusing, Owens shows how a little-known drug first popular with bikers and truckers became a national scourge. In doing so, he debunks many myths about meth addiction and supposed meth-induced antisocial and criminal behavior, and he tracks the ways law enforcement officials from the federal level to local police departments have tried first to make sense of the meth culture and then to stop the manufacture and sale of the drug. This is not a deeply scholarly study steeped in analysis so much as a ride through history and current policy.--Adapted from Library Journal review.