Sterling R. Braswell (1963 – 2012) says about his book Crazy Town: Money. Marriage. Meth., “I wrote this book because I strongly believe it tells a story that needs to be told. It is an open-ended tale, still unfolding on both the personal and global fronts, even as I write this. But from my perspective, it does have a clear beginning.”

Mr. Braswell was born in College Station, Texas. He attended college at Texas A&M, where he graduated in 1987. From 1991 to 2003, Sterling worked as a technology consultant for Microsoft and was among Bill Gates’ select employees.

After the tragic events that befell him, Mr. Braswell endeavored to learn all he could about methamphetamines and addiction.

“My qualifications for telling the personal story will become all too clear in the early chapters, but the reader may wonder by what authority I recount the history of meth. After all, my background is in software. The truth is that I began this book in the first place because at the time I initially became aware of the nightmare unfolding right under my nose, there was very little accessible information on methamphetamine. America had not yet awakened to the enormity of the problem, and even the so-called experts — the doctors, the licensed chemical dependency counselors, and (especially) the law enforcement professionals — knew very little about it. These were the people I initially turned to for help, which they were more often than not unable to give.

“So I set out to do my own research, and, this being the information age, it was not, as they say, rocket science. At the risk of sounding a bit elitist myself, if a sub-literate, dentally deficient bumpkin can master the delicate and dangerous chemistry of meth production, is it not conceivable that a reasonably well-educated software professional could look up some facts about the product?”

Mr. Braswell passed from this mortal plane in 2012. He is survived by his son.

Sterling R. Braswell’s Book Shelf