Humboldt, Emily Brady
Humboldt, Emily Brady
1 Rating(s)
List: $24.99 | Sale: $17.50
Club: $12.49

Humboldt
Life on America's Marijuana Frontier

Author: Emily Brady

Narrator: Dan Woren, Sonny Warner, Erin Bennett, Will Collyer

Unabridged: 7 hr 29 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 06/18/2013


Synopsis

In the vein of Susan Orlean's The Orchid Thief and Deborah Feldman's Unorthodox, journalist Emily Brady journeys into a secretive subculture--one that marijuana built.

Say the words "Humboldt County" to a stranger and you might receive a knowing grin. The name is infamous, and yet the place, and its inhabitants, have been nearly impenetrable. Until now.

Humboldt is a narrative exploration of an insular community in Northern California, which for nearly 40 years has existed primarily on the cultivation and sale of marijuana. It's a place where business is done with thick wads of cash and savings are buried in the backyard. In Humboldt County, marijuana supports everything from fire departments to schools, but it comes with a heavy price. As legalization looms, the community stands at a crossroads and its inhabitants are deeply divided on the issue--some want to claim their rightful heritage as master growers and have their livelihood legitimized, others want to continue reaping the inflated profits of the black market.

Emily Brady spent a year living with the highly secretive residents of Humboldt County, and her cast of eccentric, intimately drawn characters take us into a fascinating, alternate universe. It's the story of a small town that became dependent on a forbidden plant, and of how everything is changing as marijuana goes mainstream.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Miles on June 26, 2013

This was a solid three-star read, but it gets an extra star for being about a subject that is particularly close to my heart. As a Humboldt native who grew up relatively insulated from the county's ubiquitous illegal marijuana production, I became increasingly interested in the subject as I got olde......more

Goodreads review by Jennifer on September 21, 2013

Emily Brady's study of marijuana culture focuses on Humboldt County, part of California's Emerald Triangle where a great deal of pot has been grown in the past few decades. Most of the book involves the time period just prior to the first legalization push in Cali; her book illuminates the issue fro......more

Goodreads review by Elizabeth on August 25, 2024

3.5 stars A really interesting look at the history of Humboldt (a subject I sought out after watching a documentary on Big Foot sightings of all things lol) while also following 4 community members in 2010 as the region stares down the barrel of legalization.......more

Goodreads review by Kds on June 25, 2013

Beginning in the sixties a lot of people joined the ‘Back to the Landers’ in an effort to live closer to the earth and ‘be the change’ that they wished to see in the world. For many in Humboldt County, under the beauty and grandeur of the Redwoods in the wilds of Northern California, this meant grow......more

Goodreads review by Julie on March 09, 2020

How some 1970s back-to-the-landers accidentally founded a marijuana empire in the redwoods: "Humboldt: Life on America's Marijuana Frontier" by Emily Brady. A lot of the early growers (late 60s-70s-80s) were back-to-landers, at first just growing for their own personal use. But they quickly found th......more