by Max Marshall ★★★★☆
Among the Bros is Max Marshall's investigative account of a drug ring serving the colleges of the southeastern United States, with a specific focus on the College of Charleston and its Kappa Alpha (KA) fraternity. The story focuses primarily on Mikey Schmidt, a freshman who came to C of C in 2013, and Rob Liljeberg. The two met at Mikey's orientation, when Rob—a year ahead of Mikey—was manning the KA table. They became fast friends, and Rob was Mikey's in to the fraternity. Before long they'd also evolved into business partners. What started as dealing weed turned into a sophisticated benzodiazepine operation, with Xanax playing the starring role.
Because Marshall was researching the story after the bust of the drug ring, he had access to extensive records for those involved in the case—text messages, court transcripts, and more. But the reporting goes beyond simply synthesizing all of that information, and Marshall takes the time to expand the scope of his investigation beyond where the police stopped. Marshall interviewed hundreds of students, both on and off the record. While the book is primarily prose, Marshall interjects sections of "oral history" recollections from mostly-anonymized students, which added an interesting "in-their-own-words" quality to the reporting:
LACROSSE PLAYER FROM VIRGINIA: It was not one (drug) ring, it was several spread out among all these different connections. You could throw a rock a few feet and hit somebody who sold Xanax. And the same goes for cocaine, and for everything.
KAPPA SIG FROM SOUTH CAROLINA: The police basically didn't catch one-fourth of what was actually going on.
KAPPA ALPHA FROM GEORGIA: There were a lot of drug dealers within my frat.
You get the picture.
The book divides its time between a fairly extensive look at the Greek system of fraternities and sororities at the College of Charleston and blends that with an examination of the rise of benzodiazepine use among college students in the 2010s. As someone who graduated from something of a rarity—a major university without fraternities and sororities—my knowledge of college Greek life is mostly secondhand and primarily through mass media. Everyone has seen depictions of wild parties and heard stories about pledge hazing. After reading the first-hand accounts in Among the Bros, my biggest takeaway is that those depictions are on-point, and possibly even a bit understated from what was happening at C of C. As Marshall writes, "One secret of pledgeship is that boys actually kind of love to tell each other about it."
I happened to listen to this as an audiobook, and if you're planning to read it, I'd actually suggest the print version. This was one of the rare instances where I think there was a mismatch between the voice actor chosen to read the audio version and the content. That's no knock in any way on Stephen Graybill, who narrated perfectly and professionally. But Stephen has a bit of a Dan Rather-esque tone to his voice and delivery, and so imagine Rather reading reprints of text messages like "Yeah dawg we are Imma make a few finesses so we can take some vacations after may". It didn't work.
Overall, Among the Bros is a thorough accounting of a large-scale drug operation and an interesting look deep inside fraternity culture. Marshall maintains a narrative flow to the story as he gradually unveils the demise of those involved in the police bust and beyond. Despite revealing the outcome at the start of the book, Marshall's well-paced recounting of the rise and eventual downfall of the anti-heroes in the book is enough to captivate a reader and hold one's interest throughout.