No Speed Limit (2007)

In the introduction to No Speed Limit, his thorough and brisk history of methamphetamine use in America, journalist Frank Owen describes his own brief flirtation with the narcotic in the 1980s: ''Meth, I managed to convince myself, was a valuable vocational aid, a tool of the trade like a good thesaurus or a supply of freshly sharpened pencils.'' Firsthand experience makes Owen a credible commentator. He describes the superhuman energy that accompanies a meth high, a Tennessee day care that doubled as a meth lab, and the stimulant's role in gay culture. Throughout, he gently deflates alarmist rhetoric (''Meth is Death''), but never downplays the havoc the drug can wreak. B+