Bottom line: Incoherent, rambling mess of a memoir. Clearly Simon & Shuster paid absolutely no attention to this book, as there is not an editor at work at all in this crap.

I really was interested in Ms. Montana-Leblanc's experience up until she and her husband landed at Lackland AFB/Kelly AFB in San Antonio, TX. That is when I had it with her constant whining and shoving her quasi-Christian faith down my throat. She expected steak, baked potato, and merlot to be served at a refugee welcome dinner given by the staff of the hotel she and her husband is staying at in Texas. The spaghetti dinner was "cheap" in her opinion AFTER ALL she and her family went through.

And the shade throwing does not end there. Hubby's ex-wife gets several pages devoted to her evilness while she goes on about her faith in God in those same paragraphs. A aunt is vilified for expressing the opinion that Leblanc came off as "ghetto" in the film. Her celebrity status (she is featured in Spike Lee's When the Levees Broke documentary) is described over and over again, yet no mention of her sister, mother, and autistic nephew are mentioned after they are separated during rescue operations. Her family is living a good steady life in Texas, which she does not agree with - she expects them to come home to New Orleans (the reader finds this out through one of the captions to a photo).

Self-righteous hypocritical rumor-mongering preachiness written as though someone just transcribed word for word her inner monologue. 0 stars. And be careful, because this author has come after reviewers on Amazon for less than glowing 5 star reviews.

Steven Suo's work with The Oregonian http://www.oregonlive.com/special/oregonian/meth/.

Methland by Nick Reding is the story of how Olewein, Iowa (pronounced Ol-wine)became the became the living embodiment of the meth epidemic. There are many angles that Reding investigates to show how complex the epidemic is and how multiple solutions are needed to combat the problems. The meth epidemic is not just a drug problem; it is a problem borne out of the consequences of deregulation and mergers of Big Pharma, Big Ag, immigration policy, and lack of government support due to lobbyists' money. Towards the end of the book Reding links the meth epidemic with domestic (white supremacists and outlaw biker gangs) and international terrorism (Yemenis who were funding Hamas). As usual,

Reding's work is both a profile of the town and its people and a well-researched book that takes much of the work (citing properly) of Steven Suo's journalist work (link provided above). It is also a personal labor of love for Reding, a native of St Louis, Missouri and who has family connections in Iowa. He first noticed the meth epidemic taking over small Midwestern towns in 1999.

What was most interesting to me was that meth has been and still is a legal drug in the US. Reding even makes the case that meth is "the all-American drug". I did not realize that between the 1930s and 1980s, meth has been an over-prescribed medicine, especially in small rural white towns. Meth use turned epidemic and violent and deadly by the mid to late 1980s through the mid-2000s, when the Oxycontin epidemic started in earnest (Reding notes that Oxycontin abuse among meth users show an overlap of the two epidemics).

I highly recommend this book.

This book is about the iconic California burger chain In-N-Out Burger, a favorite haunt of mine during my five years living in California. I had to pick up and read this book when I discovered it on my library's shelf, tucked away in the business section.

Now I wished I had not read this book. The allure of the brand is definitely gone. I would still eat there though, so I am not completely put off (those are some damn good burgers and shakes, lol).

The story of In-N-Out started with two WWII veterans, Harry and Esther Snyder, and the post war boom. For most of the early years (up to Harry's death in 1976), it was a nice story of immigrants' children and veterans starting their lives and business in an suburb of LA. In that era, we also got A LOT of information about Every. Damn. Other. Fast. Food. Chain. in America. I know just as much about the early years of McDonalds, Wendys, Taco Bell, KFC, and Carls Jr (the only one that had anything to do with In-N-Out due to the life-long friendships of the Snyders and the Karchers).

The 1970s-early 1990s focused on expansion and how the younger son, Rich, took over the business when his father died. It was also about how Guy, the older son, was an awful human being - I mean how different Rich and Guy were. When the story focused on the business, it was interesting; when it focused on either brother's personal life, the story seriously derailed due to the writing (more on that later).

The 1990s was all about how the family fuck-up (Guy) took over the reins of the company after his brother's death and didn't do jack squat. Basically, the plan for the company during this time is just keep on keeping on. When it came to personal lives, it was more daytime television and you can see the wheels starting to come off.

The early 2000s was one long series of legal battles, both serious and ridiculously petty, and the death of Esther/granddaughter Lynsi (I swear that is how you spell the name! **eyeroll**) taking over the reins of a company that she couldn't give a shit about. As it were, not quite a HEA.

The writing was bad. The author is a journalist at Business Week magazine; when I read her bio, I knew I was in for "job creators rule! everyone else in the system sucks!" cheerleading. Oh boy, author does love her some Harry, Esther, and Rich - the fawning was so overt, you wonder if the author was angling for a job in the PR department of In-N-Out Burger. Also, the author fan girls over Ronald Reagan and all things Christian, but only the Protestant version, thank you. Her agenda and bias came through loud and clear. To top it off, I swear the book was written at a 5th or 6th grade reading level, then the author just add big SAT type of words randomly throughout to prove how smart she was. The writing was very repetitive. 

However, the author did not have a lot of decent people to profile in this book. I liked Harry all the way and Esther up until she indulged and enabled Guy's drug issues. Rich was a born-again Christian who had no problem foisting his religious views on customers and employees alike while trying to legally cut his brother out of the family company completely. Guy was a fuck up, but some of his problems probably stemmed from his relationship with his dad, brother, and first ex-wife. Granddaughter Lynsi is an idiot and spoiled heiress, leaving her brother-in-law to be currently the one running things (he is an idiot too and manipulative to boot). I see the company eventually selling out to either a private equity firm or going public after Lynsi burns through her inheritance and jeopardizes the company.

Yeah, the shine is off this clean-cut, all-American brand for me. But I would love to have a cheeseburger, fries, and vanilla milkshake from their shack right now. 2 stars.