The Book Prize Index

Dreamland: The True Story of America’s Opiate Epidemic

Sam Quinones

Sam Quinones chronicles how, over the past 15 years, enterprising sugar cane farmers in a small county on the west coast of Mexico created a unique distribution system that brought black tar heroin-- the cheapest, most addictive form of the opiate, 2 to 3 times purer than its white powder cousin-- to the veins of people across the United States.

Medicine & Public HealthMedicine & Public Health · medium confidenceMedicine & Public Health81 signalsLlm Classifier: Medicine & Public Health -> Medicine & Public HealthGoogle Books: Social Science -> Society & CultureKeyword Classifier: American History -> American HistoryDisease, Epidemics & DrugsDrugs, Addiction & TreatmentMental Health & Psychology

Award History

1 wins · 3 total

AwardYearResultCategory / Notes
National Book Critics Circle Award for NonfictionMajor2015WinnerSecondary source
Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Current InterestMajor2015FinalistSecondary source
PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction2017FinalistSource URL pending
View all award history (3)
Experimental book profileGenerated by GPT-5.4 nano · may contain inaccuracies

This is an unverified interpretation of the catalog description, offered as an opt-in discovery experiment—not as bibliographic fact.

  1. 01 Central figures

    None extracted with sufficient confidence.

  2. 02 Central places

    None extracted with sufficient confidence.

    These suggestions did not meet the normal display threshold and are more likely to be wrong.

    • the west coast of Mexico50%

  3. 03 Suggested argument

    No argument inferred with sufficient confidence.

    This suggestion did not meet the normal display threshold and is more likely to be wrong.

    A distribution system created by enterprising sugar cane farmers in a small county on Mexico’s west coast brought black tar heroin into the U.S., fueling America’s opiate epidemic.

    Model confidence 58%

  4. 04 Reading orientation

    38 / 100 academic

    Serious trade

    An estimate of intended readership and scholarly apparatus—not quality or importance.

Confidence percentages are the model's own estimates. Profile confidence: 62%.