Among the Bros is a disturbing true story of increasing greed, shocking carelessness with human life, drug addiction, tragic turns and deaths, and outrageous hubris that is the undoing of the young men at the heart of the nonfiction account.
Max Marshall's Among the Bros is a nonfiction peek into a multi-million-dollar drug ring and its many intersections with fraternities in the southeast.
By tracing the college lives of Mikey and Rob, friends at the College of Charleston, as they pledge fraternities and then carve out paths for themselves--Mikey drops out, while Rob seems to be a golden child who does and has it all--Marshall details the young men's increasingly dangerous and illegal choices and their involvement in an interstate drug ring.
Marshall notes that he himself was a member of a fraternity, ostensibly to allow for an insider perspective to these communities or at least some context from his own experience. But this doesn't feel like a fraternity story. The boys who are interviewed and highlighted in the book generally have access to money, some live together, and in many cases they demonstrate a desire to have a good time, which might be said to allow for the spread and abuse of substances detailed here.
But Among the Bros focuses on what feels like something well beyond fraternity life: the book subjects are ambitiously greedy, drug-fueled, and they show growing disconnects from reality, society, basic survival strategies, and common sense. The young men involved are insufferable: they are selfish, frequently idiotic, and callous. They demonstrate shocking carelessness with human life and a disregard for its worth; compounding greed; extreme foolishness; lack of awareness; a prevalent sense of entitlement and arrogance; an irrational sense of being above the law; and devastating levels of hubris that end up being the men's undoing. Marshall ultimately links the drug ring to multiple tragic stories of addiction, several deaths, and a murder.
The scale of the drug ring is terrifying--involving thousands of pills, huge units of cocaine, and more, all moving across state lines and through chains of sale and use.
About 75 percent of the way through the book, the facts begin to focus on the sting and the chain of informants, which I found particularly interesting. But I didn't feel there were other illuminating angles to the story beyond the shock and awe of the account.
As I read the disturbing sequence of events, I felt increasing despair and disgust as well as horror at the synthesizing of hundreds of interviews, text messages, and accounts, and at times I questioned the hearts and souls of the human beings being discussed. I was relieved to finish reading this one.
I'd love to hear your thoughts about this book!
I listened to Among the Bros as an audiobook.
For other Bossy reviews of nonfiction books, check out the titles at this link.
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