Reefer Madness, Eric Schlosser
Reefer Madness, Eric Schlosser
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Reefer Madness
Sex, Drugs and Cheap Labor in the Black Market

Author: Eric Schlosser

Narrator: Eric Schlosser

Unabridged: 7 hr 43 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 05/01/2003


Synopsis

In Reefer Madness, the best-selling author of Fast Food Nation investigates America's black market and its far-reaching influence on our society through three of its mainstays -- pot, porn, and illegal immigrants.
The underground economy is vast; it comprises perhaps 10 percent -- or more -- of America's overall economy, and it's on the rise. Eric Schlosser charts this growth, and finds its roots in the nexus of ingenuity, greed, idealism, and hypocrisy that is American culture. He reveals the fascinating workings of the shadow economy by focusing on marijuana, one of the nation's largest cash crops; pornography, whose greatest beneficiaries include Fortune 100 companies; and illegal migrant workers, whose lot often resembles that of medieval serfs.
All three industries show how the black market has burgeoned over the past three decades, as America's reckless faith in the free market has combined with a deep-seated puritanism to create situations both preposterous and tragic. Schlosser traces compelling parallels between underground and overground: how tycoons and gangsters rise and fall, how new technology shapes a market, how government intervention can reinvigorate black markets as well as mainstream ones, how big business learns -- and profits -- from the underground.
With intrepid reportage, rich history, and incisive argument, Schlosser illuminates the shadow economy and the culture that casts that shadow.

About The Author

Eric Schlosser is a correspondent for the Atlantic Monthly and the author of Fast Food Nation. He is currently at work on a book about the American prison system.


Reviews

Goodreads review by David

Investigating America's Vices 19 June 2013 Written the author of Fast Food Nation, this book contains three case studies that each dealing with an area of the black market: marijuana, immigrant workers in the strawberry fields on California, and the hard core porn industry. As one can expect from Sch......more

Eric Schlosser, the grade-a muckraker whose widely read Fast Food Nation catapulted him to fame, returns with Reefer Madness, dedicated to nothing less than examining the underbelly of America's black market. Through three distinct essays (dealing with marijuana, migrant workers, and pornography), h......more

Goodreads review by Jason

Reefer Madness is a collection of 3 extended essays about the underground market in America for marijuana, migrant workers, and pornography. The author has focused primarily on the economic aspects of the underground. The topics themselves are quite interesting. Reading about the strict laws against......more

Eric Schlosser has made a name for himself by probing behind the scenes of popular American phenomena. He became famous for Fast Food Nation, which was later turned into a film. Schlosser's subject matter may trend towards the pop world, but his cross of investigative journalism and postmodernist soc......more

Goodreads review by Randy

I read and enjoyed Fast Food Nation several years ago. This book is by the same author, Eric Schlosser. None of the detail or commentary in this book is original, but it is put together in a compelling package and in a manor that makes you think about how some of the laws and prejudices that we have......more