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Sam Quinones BiographySam Quinones (last name pronounced Kin-YOH-Ness) is a Los Angeles-based freelance journalist and author of three books of narrative nonfiction. His latest book is Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic (Bloomsbury, 2015), for which he traveled across the United States.
Dreamland chronicles the roots of America’s epidemic of opiate addiction, nation’s deadliest drug scourge in its history.
In it, Quinones recounts twin stories of drug marketing in the 21st Century: A pharmaceutical corporation flogs its legal new opiate prescription painkiller as nonaddictive. Meanwhile, immigrants from a small town in Nayarit, Mexico devise a method for retailing black-tar heroin like pizza in the US, and take that system nationwide, riding a wave of addiction to prescription pills from coast to coast. The collision of those two forces has led to America's deadliest drug scourge in modern times.
The story is also an attempt to show how Americans’ desire to avoid pain, together with destruction of community, exaltation of the private, made the country especially vulnerable to addiction to opiates, the most isolating class of drugs we know as a species.
Dreamland won a National Book Critics Circle award for the Best Nonfiction Book of 2015.
It was also selected as one of the Best Books of 2015 by Amazon.com, Slate.com, the Daily Beast, Buzzfeed, Seattle Times, Boston Globe, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Entertainment Weekly, Audible, and in the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg Business by Nobel economics laureate, Prof. Angus Deaton, of Princeton University.
In 2019, Dreamland was selected as one the Best 10 True-Crime Books of all time based on lists, surveys, and ratings of more than 90 million Goodread readers.
A Young Adult version of Dreamland was released in July of 2019.
Quinones is at work on a follow up to Dreamland, about the scourge of fentanyl, methamphetamine, as well as dispatches from grassroots efforts to combat the epidemic.
His first two highly acclaimed books grew from his 10 years living and working as a freelance writer in Mexico (1994-2004).
True Tales From Another Mexico: The Lynch Mob, the Popsicle Kings, Chalino and the Bronx was released in 2001. It is a cult classic of a book from Mexico’s vital margins – stories of drag queens and Oaxacan Indian basketball players, popsicle makers and telenovela stars, migrants, farm workers, a narcosaint, a slain drug balladeer, a slum boss, and a doomed tough guy.
In 2007, he came out with Antonio's Gun and Delfino's Dream: True Tales of Mexican Migration. In it, Quinones narrates the saga of the Henry Ford of Velvet Painting, and of how an opera scene emerged in Tijuana, and how a Zacatecan taco empire formed in Chicago. He tells the tale of the Tomato King, of a high-school soccer season in Kansas, and of Mexican corruption in a small LA County town. Threading through the book are three tales of a modern Mexican Huck Finn. Quinones ends the collection in a chapter called "Leaving Mexico" with his harrowing tangle with the Narco-Mennonites of Chihuahua.
Sam Quinones is formerly a reporter with the L.A. Times, where he worked for 10 years (2004-2014). He is a veteran reporter on immigration, gangs, drug trafficking, the border.
Contact a speaker booking agent to check availability on Sam Quinones and other top speakers and celebrities.
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Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic
Antonio's Gun And Delfino's Dream: True Tales of Mexican Migration
True Tales from Another Mexico
Before writing his latest book “Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic,” Sam Quinones spent a lot of time writing about a place he later found out had a lot to do with the problem: Mexico. Quinones, the featured speaker for West Virginia University’s David C. Hardesty Jr. Festival of Ideas this year, was a freelance writer there from 1994 until 2004, focusing on...
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All American Entertainment (AAE) exclusively represents the interests of talent buyers, and does not claim to be the agency or management for any speaker or artist on this site. AAE is a talent booking agency for paid events only. We do not handle requests for donation of time or media requests for interviews, and cannot provide celebrity contact information.
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Sam Quinones (last name pronounced Kin-YOH-Ness) is a Los Angeles-based freelance journalist and author of three books of narrative nonfiction. His latest book is Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic (Bloomsbury, 2015), for which he traveled across the United States.
Dreamland chronicles the roots of America’s epidemic of opiate addiction, nation’s deadliest drug scourge in its history.
In it, Quinones recounts twin stories of drug marketing in the 21st Century: A pharmaceutical corporation flogs its legal new opiate prescription painkiller as nonaddictive. Meanwhile, immigrants from a small town in Nayarit, Mexico devise a method for retailing black-tar heroin like pizza in the US, and take that system nationwide, riding a wave of addiction to prescription pills from coast to coast. The collision of those two forces has led to America's deadliest drug scourge in modern times.
The story is also an attempt to show how Americans’ desire to avoid pain, together with destruction of community, exaltation of the private, made the country especially vulnerable to addiction to opiates, the most isolating class of drugs we know as a species.
Dreamland won a National Book Critics Circle award for the Best Nonfiction Book of 2015.
It was also selected as one of the Best Books of 2015 by Amazon.com, Slate.com, the Daily Beast, Buzzfeed, Seattle Times, Boston Globe, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Entertainment Weekly, Audible, and in the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg Business by Nobel economics laureate, Prof. Angus Deaton, of Princeton University.
In 2019, Dreamland was selected as one the Best 10 True-Crime Books of all time based on lists, surveys, and ratings of more than 90 million Goodread readers.
A Young Adult version of Dreamland was released in July of 2019.
Quinones is at work on a follow up to Dreamland, about the scourge of fentanyl, methamphetamine, as well as dispatches from grassroots efforts to combat the epidemic.
His first two highly acclaimed books grew from his 10 years living and working as a freelance writer in Mexico (1994-2004).
True Tales From Another Mexico: The Lynch Mob, the Popsicle Kings, Chalino and the Bronx was released in 2001. It is a cult classic of a book from Mexico’s vital margins – stories of drag queens and Oaxacan Indian basketball players, popsicle makers and telenovela stars, migrants, farm workers, a narcosaint, a slain drug balladeer, a slum boss, and a doomed tough guy.
In 2007, he came out with Antonio's Gun and Delfino's Dream: True Tales of Mexican Migration. In it, Quinones narrates the saga of the Henry Ford of Velvet Painting, and of how an opera scene emerged in Tijuana, and how a Zacatecan taco empire formed in Chicago. He tells the tale of the Tomato King, of a high-school soccer season in Kansas, and of Mexican corruption in a small LA County town. Threading through the book are three tales of a modern Mexican Huck Finn. Quinones ends the collection in a chapter called "Leaving Mexico" with his harrowing tangle with the Narco-Mennonites of Chihuahua.
Sam Quinones is formerly a reporter with the L.A. Times, where he worked for 10 years (2004-2014). He is a veteran reporter on immigration, gangs, drug trafficking, the border.
Contact a speaker booking agent to check availability on Sam Quinones and other top speakers and celebrities.
Sam Quinones is a keynote speaker and industry expert who speaks on a wide range of topics . The estimated speaking fee range to book Sam Quinones for your event is $10,000 - $20,000. Sam Quinones generally travels from and can be booked for (private) corporate events, personal appearances, keynote speeches, or other performances. Similar motivational celebrity speakers are Charles Blow, Donna Brazile, Ilyasah Shabazz, April Ryan and Danny Trejo. Contact All American Speakers for ratings, reviews, videos and information on scheduling Sam Quinones for an upcoming event.
Before writing his latest book “Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic,” Sam Quinones spent a lot of time writing about a place he later found out had a lot to do with the problem: Mexico. Quinones, the featured speaker for West Virginia University’s David C. Hardesty Jr. Festival of Ideas this year, was a freelance writer there from 1994 until 2004, focusing on...
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This website is a resource for event professionals and strives to provide the most comprehensive catalog of thought leaders and industry experts to consider for speaking engagements. A listing or profile on this website does not imply an agency affiliation or endorsement by the talent.
All American Entertainment (AAE) exclusively represents the interests of talent buyers, and does not claim to be the agency or management for any speaker or artist on this site. AAE is a talent booking agency for paid events only. We do not handle requests for donation of time or media requests for interviews, and cannot provide celebrity contact information.
If you are the talent, and wish to request removal from this catalog or report an issue with your profile, please click here.
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