crgs's review against another edition
3.0
I loved his other book, how he writes a very factual journalistic subject like a juicy novel.
The stories of the people that he interviewed and the way that he builds his arguments and viewpoints is very enjoyable and informative.
I enjoyed it, but not as much as Fast Food Nation, and some parts I remember took me a little longer to read through.
The stories of the people that he interviewed and the way that he builds his arguments and viewpoints is very enjoyable and informative.
I enjoyed it, but not as much as Fast Food Nation, and some parts I remember took me a little longer to read through.
vdarcangelo's review against another edition
4.0
This review originally appeared in the BOULDER WEEKLY
http://archive.boulderweekly.com/051304/buzzlead.html
Notes from the Underground Nation
Through pot, produce and peep shows, Eric Schlosser explores America’s shadow economy.
by Vince Darcangelo
- - - - - - - - - - - -
A poor Midwestern farmer serves time in Leavenworth for growing pot. Migrant farm workers from labor camps sleep in parked cars in Southern California. A comic-book salesman in Cleveland builds a pornography empire and turns the modern porn industry into a mainstream multi-billion dollar business. How in the name of Kurt Vonnegut are these folks related? They are all part of America’s underground economy, documented in Eric Schlosser’s new book, Reefer Madness.
In his newest work of investigative journalism, Schlosser, the author of the best-selling Fast Food Nation, explores America’s black market–a shadow economy that accounts for an estimated 10 percent of our country’s Gross Domestic Product–through essays on marijuana, illegal immigrants and adult entertainment. The essays in Reefer Madness stand alone as individual works of investigative reporting, but Reefer Madness is not an anthology. It is a cohesive, multi-layered piece tied together by a narrative thread that gives voice to the winners and losers of the black market.
"It’s a different kind of book, not purely a collection of essays because the three [topics] share a lot of common themes," says Schlosser. "But it’s also not a book that I sat down and conceived from scratch like Fast Food Nation."
Though he pitched this book prior to writing Fast Food Nation, Schlosser says he couldn’t get publishers interested in Reefer Madness until Fast Food Nation spent two years on the New York Times best-seller list.
"It was terribly difficult to get people to care about pot smokers being locked up and really hard to get people to care about illegal immigrants being exploited," he says. "It took the success of Fast Food Nation to provide the leverage to pay attention to these things. It’s a lot easier to write about Britney Spears if you want attention and publication, but poor people of color is not something that publishers are desperate to publish at the moment.
"I feel like a lot of what I’m doing is in opposition to the celebrity journalism that has been so popular for the last 20 years," he continues. "I’ve really been trying to do old-fashioned investigative journalism… to take voices and people who don’t have access to the mainstream media and give them the opportunity to be heard. I think these subjects are important, but they’re maybe not getting the kind of coverage they should be."
This is especially clear in the book’s second essay, "In the Strawberry Fields," which takes the reader beyond the produce counter and into the fields where migrant farmers are exploited for cheap labor.
"Once people felt comfortable that I wasn’t an immigration officer, people were really eager to talk," says Schlosser. "There are not reporters banging on the doors of migrant workers every day. These are people who are completely excluded from the mainstream, whose voices really aren’t heard every day."
Schlosser’s ability to gain intimate access to his subjects and follow them into the fields accentuates the human component of black-market politics, part of the struggle that is often neglected in discussions of legal battles and illicit profits concerning the underground economy. "In the Strawberry Fields" tackles the intricacies of immigration law, sharecropping and the agricultural industry, but what is most compelling are the portraits of the exploited workers, the tragic victims of America’s black market.
Another tragic figure in Reefer Madness is pornography kingpin Reuben Sturman, one of the black market’s winners whose improbable rise and ultimate fall is documented in "An Empire of the Obscene." Sturman was a comic-book salesman who built an adult-entertainment empire that shaped the industry in the ’80s and ’90s and was victorious in numerous freedom-of-speech battles with the federal government. But Sturman was eventually nabbed for tax evasion, making him an ironic figure akin to Al Capone.
"I found Sturman to be an incredibly charismatic, bright and interesting person," says Schlosser. "When he was battling the obscenity laws, I really felt like he was on the right side. When he was funneling millions of dollars in cash to offshore accounts and threatening people with violence, he went over to the dark side.
"He’s somebody who I just think got corrupted by power and money. He started out maybe in one place and wound up in a very different place. It’s a very American story in that sense," he continues. "But had the laws been different, you would have seen his face on the cover of Fortune magazine and hailed as this great, brilliant chief executive."
Whatever his thoughts on Sturman are now, in Reefer Madness Schlosser presents each of his characters with absolute objectivity. The impartiality and lack of an agenda in Schlosser’s writing allows the reader to experience the subjects as though they are the ones conducting the investigation. Schlosser attributes this to his approach of investigating first, opining later.
"I have the good fortune on most of the subjects I write about to start from a place of total ignorance," he says. "For me, a lot of the pleasure in the work is educating myself about what’s going on and learning about the subject. It’s toward the end of the research that I have very strong views about what’s going on."
This is especially true in the book’s opening essay, "Reefer Madness," which Schlosser says came about through a discussion with an editor at the Atlantic Monthly about whether there was anyone in prison for marijuana.
"I had smoked pot, but I didn’t begin the investigation from the point of view of trying to persuade people to change the marijuana laws because I didn’t know anything about it," says Schlosser. "Once I’m done with a subject and I’ve come to my conclusions, then I speak out, then I become more of an activist on an issue. I don’t start as an activist and then decide to write something."
The result is Reefer Madness, a thoughtful collection of essays that takes the reader into America’s economic underbelly and into the lives of its often colorful participants. In the end, the reader will never look at a doobie, strawberry or porn flick the same way.
"I think I write things to open people’s eyes and maybe wake them up," says Schlosser. "What’s gratifying to me is if people start the book and then finish it and at the end of the book they’re more aware than when they started it."
http://archive.boulderweekly.com/051304/buzzlead.html
Notes from the Underground Nation
Through pot, produce and peep shows, Eric Schlosser explores America’s shadow economy.
by Vince Darcangelo
- - - - - - - - - - - -
A poor Midwestern farmer serves time in Leavenworth for growing pot. Migrant farm workers from labor camps sleep in parked cars in Southern California. A comic-book salesman in Cleveland builds a pornography empire and turns the modern porn industry into a mainstream multi-billion dollar business. How in the name of Kurt Vonnegut are these folks related? They are all part of America’s underground economy, documented in Eric Schlosser’s new book, Reefer Madness.
In his newest work of investigative journalism, Schlosser, the author of the best-selling Fast Food Nation, explores America’s black market–a shadow economy that accounts for an estimated 10 percent of our country’s Gross Domestic Product–through essays on marijuana, illegal immigrants and adult entertainment. The essays in Reefer Madness stand alone as individual works of investigative reporting, but Reefer Madness is not an anthology. It is a cohesive, multi-layered piece tied together by a narrative thread that gives voice to the winners and losers of the black market.
"It’s a different kind of book, not purely a collection of essays because the three [topics] share a lot of common themes," says Schlosser. "But it’s also not a book that I sat down and conceived from scratch like Fast Food Nation."
Though he pitched this book prior to writing Fast Food Nation, Schlosser says he couldn’t get publishers interested in Reefer Madness until Fast Food Nation spent two years on the New York Times best-seller list.
"It was terribly difficult to get people to care about pot smokers being locked up and really hard to get people to care about illegal immigrants being exploited," he says. "It took the success of Fast Food Nation to provide the leverage to pay attention to these things. It’s a lot easier to write about Britney Spears if you want attention and publication, but poor people of color is not something that publishers are desperate to publish at the moment.
"I feel like a lot of what I’m doing is in opposition to the celebrity journalism that has been so popular for the last 20 years," he continues. "I’ve really been trying to do old-fashioned investigative journalism… to take voices and people who don’t have access to the mainstream media and give them the opportunity to be heard. I think these subjects are important, but they’re maybe not getting the kind of coverage they should be."
This is especially clear in the book’s second essay, "In the Strawberry Fields," which takes the reader beyond the produce counter and into the fields where migrant farmers are exploited for cheap labor.
"Once people felt comfortable that I wasn’t an immigration officer, people were really eager to talk," says Schlosser. "There are not reporters banging on the doors of migrant workers every day. These are people who are completely excluded from the mainstream, whose voices really aren’t heard every day."
Schlosser’s ability to gain intimate access to his subjects and follow them into the fields accentuates the human component of black-market politics, part of the struggle that is often neglected in discussions of legal battles and illicit profits concerning the underground economy. "In the Strawberry Fields" tackles the intricacies of immigration law, sharecropping and the agricultural industry, but what is most compelling are the portraits of the exploited workers, the tragic victims of America’s black market.
Another tragic figure in Reefer Madness is pornography kingpin Reuben Sturman, one of the black market’s winners whose improbable rise and ultimate fall is documented in "An Empire of the Obscene." Sturman was a comic-book salesman who built an adult-entertainment empire that shaped the industry in the ’80s and ’90s and was victorious in numerous freedom-of-speech battles with the federal government. But Sturman was eventually nabbed for tax evasion, making him an ironic figure akin to Al Capone.
"I found Sturman to be an incredibly charismatic, bright and interesting person," says Schlosser. "When he was battling the obscenity laws, I really felt like he was on the right side. When he was funneling millions of dollars in cash to offshore accounts and threatening people with violence, he went over to the dark side.
"He’s somebody who I just think got corrupted by power and money. He started out maybe in one place and wound up in a very different place. It’s a very American story in that sense," he continues. "But had the laws been different, you would have seen his face on the cover of Fortune magazine and hailed as this great, brilliant chief executive."
Whatever his thoughts on Sturman are now, in Reefer Madness Schlosser presents each of his characters with absolute objectivity. The impartiality and lack of an agenda in Schlosser’s writing allows the reader to experience the subjects as though they are the ones conducting the investigation. Schlosser attributes this to his approach of investigating first, opining later.
"I have the good fortune on most of the subjects I write about to start from a place of total ignorance," he says. "For me, a lot of the pleasure in the work is educating myself about what’s going on and learning about the subject. It’s toward the end of the research that I have very strong views about what’s going on."
This is especially true in the book’s opening essay, "Reefer Madness," which Schlosser says came about through a discussion with an editor at the Atlantic Monthly about whether there was anyone in prison for marijuana.
"I had smoked pot, but I didn’t begin the investigation from the point of view of trying to persuade people to change the marijuana laws because I didn’t know anything about it," says Schlosser. "Once I’m done with a subject and I’ve come to my conclusions, then I speak out, then I become more of an activist on an issue. I don’t start as an activist and then decide to write something."
The result is Reefer Madness, a thoughtful collection of essays that takes the reader into America’s economic underbelly and into the lives of its often colorful participants. In the end, the reader will never look at a doobie, strawberry or porn flick the same way.
"I think I write things to open people’s eyes and maybe wake them up," says Schlosser. "What’s gratifying to me is if people start the book and then finish it and at the end of the book they’re more aware than when they started it."
dogpound's review against another edition
4.0
I really loved this book, perhaps more than Fastfood nation. Drugs, porn, strawberries, who could ask for more?
melissabalick's review
2.0
This is a pretty good book, but it didn't take me anywhere I'd never been before. The best section is the third and longest -- the one about the porn industry. Who knew so much of the proliferation of porn could be chalked up to one wily rebel called Reuben Sturman? That part is interesting and really worth reading. The marijuana part and the illegal immigration part were unsurprising but still managed to make my blood boil -- which is also unsurprising.
wellington299's review against another edition
3.0
After reading Schlosser's earlier work, Fast Food Nation, I excitedly jumped into his latest work, Reefer Madness. I was disappointed.
This book felt like three other research projects he did - three projects that were on his B list. While he devoted an entire book to the the history and implication of the Fast Food industry in Fast Food Nation, he just cobbled together three subjects.
The first dealt with the views of marijuana by our government. Growing up in the Nancy Regan "Just Say No" world I always figured that government was against marijuana. In fact, the first official American government laws on marijuana asked Americans to GROW marijuana.
There were long biographies of particular marijuana farmers which I found a little long. People who were simply growing marijuana or trafficking marijuana spent more time in prisons than many murderers. Judges were given wide berths in the interpretation of trafficking, possession, and the amounts of marijuana. Sadly enough, some of the harshest critics of recreational drugs had their own children just have to attend community service and a nominal fine. Ironically, Charles Keating, Jr., who spent millions of taxpayer money on anti-drug campaigns, would get into jail for billion dollar fraud in the S&L scandals.
The second essay was about immigration workers . This has been talked about ad nauseum and the amount of page devoted hardly give it justice. I learned a lot about strawberries, but perhaps working in a Hispanic newspaper for the past four years makes it harder to give me great new insight
The third essay was about the growth of pornography mostly covering the life of a certain porn mogul (not Larry Flynt). The book lightly touched on some of the hypocrosies on our public view of porn and our private habits. There were a number of fascinating points in this essay but it just lacked focus.
That pretty much sums the book up. I congratulate Eric on a fine job of research and almost thundering together a book that would shake our thinking.
This book felt like three other research projects he did - three projects that were on his B list. While he devoted an entire book to the the history and implication of the Fast Food industry in Fast Food Nation, he just cobbled together three subjects.
The first dealt with the views of marijuana by our government. Growing up in the Nancy Regan "Just Say No" world I always figured that government was against marijuana. In fact, the first official American government laws on marijuana asked Americans to GROW marijuana.
There were long biographies of particular marijuana farmers which I found a little long. People who were simply growing marijuana or trafficking marijuana spent more time in prisons than many murderers. Judges were given wide berths in the interpretation of trafficking, possession, and the amounts of marijuana. Sadly enough, some of the harshest critics of recreational drugs had their own children just have to attend community service and a nominal fine. Ironically, Charles Keating, Jr., who spent millions of taxpayer money on anti-drug campaigns, would get into jail for billion dollar fraud in the S&L scandals.
The second essay was about immigration workers . This has been talked about ad nauseum and the amount of page devoted hardly give it justice. I learned a lot about strawberries, but perhaps working in a Hispanic newspaper for the past four years makes it harder to give me great new insight
The third essay was about the growth of pornography mostly covering the life of a certain porn mogul (not Larry Flynt). The book lightly touched on some of the hypocrosies on our public view of porn and our private habits. There were a number of fascinating points in this essay but it just lacked focus.
That pretty much sums the book up. I congratulate Eric on a fine job of research and almost thundering together a book that would shake our thinking.
caitlin21521's review
4.0
This book is divided into three sections: one on marijuana, one on cheap labor/immigration/etc, and one on pornography. However, it would have been much better had Schlosser devoted a book to each topic. They are all fascinating, and it's interesting to see just what a huge part of our culture and government each of these taboos are.
The first section on marijuana seems the most thoroughly researched and the most fascinating. It is scary to consider how much time and effort the government puts into banning marijuana when there are so many other dangerous drugs (more dangerous even) out there that should have just as much attention, if not more. Some of the stories concerning the individuals were heart-breaking, such as the veteran who was kicked out of his home for growing medical marijuana -- and he had no other place to go.
The second section on cheap labor laws and Mexican immigrants was also fascinating, but it was far too short. Basically, it is a brief overview of what most of us already know and I think if Schlosser had written on separate book on this topic, he could have done so much more.
The third section on pornography was also interesting, particularly about the porn mogul (who is not Hugh Hefner or Larry Flynt) who rose to the top during the seventies, I think it was. Other than that, this topic too was comprised mainly of what most of us already know about the dark side of the pornography world.
It is not nearly as good as Fast Food Nation, but that is probably because Schlosser tries to cram too much into one book. While they are all tied together under the category of "The American Black Market", each one is so convoluted and complex that they deserve books of their own rather than short chapters within one book. Thus, Schlosser can prevent recycling data that we already know and instead devote his time to presenting us with more unknown ugly facts and more solutions.
The first section on marijuana seems the most thoroughly researched and the most fascinating. It is scary to consider how much time and effort the government puts into banning marijuana when there are so many other dangerous drugs (more dangerous even) out there that should have just as much attention, if not more. Some of the stories concerning the individuals were heart-breaking, such as the veteran who was kicked out of his home for growing medical marijuana -- and he had no other place to go.
The second section on cheap labor laws and Mexican immigrants was also fascinating, but it was far too short. Basically, it is a brief overview of what most of us already know and I think if Schlosser had written on separate book on this topic, he could have done so much more.
The third section on pornography was also interesting, particularly about the porn mogul (who is not Hugh Hefner or Larry Flynt) who rose to the top during the seventies, I think it was. Other than that, this topic too was comprised mainly of what most of us already know about the dark side of the pornography world.
It is not nearly as good as Fast Food Nation, but that is probably because Schlosser tries to cram too much into one book. While they are all tied together under the category of "The American Black Market", each one is so convoluted and complex that they deserve books of their own rather than short chapters within one book. Thus, Schlosser can prevent recycling data that we already know and instead devote his time to presenting us with more unknown ugly facts and more solutions.
harvio's review
3.0
- I think that this book falls far short of his 'Fast Food Nation', where he displayed hard-hitting, in-depth investigative journalism, in a brilliant analysis of the fast food industry's impact on society. In 'Reefer Madness' Schlosser examines three social-issues-as-black-market-economies (the marijuana trade, the pornography industry, and the exploitation of illegal immigrant laborers), and exposes the social hypocrisy regarding these topics.
- eg. "Sometimes dope dealers get longer sentences than murderers. Some states have made mandatory jail time for possession of even one joint, but no mandatory jail tme for conviction of spousal abuse (or child molestation!).
- None of these three topics is covered in the depth I would have like to have seen, and Schlosser doesn't really tie the three, diverse, subjects together very well. His most powerful argument is, not so much for legalization of marijuana, as advocating a more uniform approach (nationally).
- eg. "Sometimes dope dealers get longer sentences than murderers. Some states have made mandatory jail time for possession of even one joint, but no mandatory jail tme for conviction of spousal abuse (or child molestation!).
- None of these three topics is covered in the depth I would have like to have seen, and Schlosser doesn't really tie the three, diverse, subjects together very well. His most powerful argument is, not so much for legalization of marijuana, as advocating a more uniform approach (nationally).
rushfan77's review against another edition
4.0
Somewhat dated. Good for some background on these subjects.