Book Info |
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Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market |
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| Author: |
Eric Schlosser |
| ISBN: |
0618446702 |
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Book Review |
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America"s black market is much larger than we realize, and it affects us all deeply, whether or not we smoke pot, rent a risqué video, or pay our kids" nannies in cash. In Reefer Madness the best-selling author of Fast Food Nation turns his exacting eye on the underbelly of the American marketplace and its far-reaching influence on our society. Exposing three American mainstays — pot, porn, and illegal immigrants — Eric Schlosser shows how the black market has burgeoned over the past several decades. He also draws compelling parallels between underground and overground: how tycoons and gangsters rise and fall, how new techonology shapes a market, how government intervention can reinvigorate black markets as well as mainstream ones, and how big business learns — and profits — from the underground. Schlosser blends big-picture analysis, intrepid reporting, and fascinating character studies to paint "an enthralling yet appalling portrait of things too often ignored" (Seattle Post-Intelligencer). Reefer Madness is a powerful investigation that illuminates the shadow economy and the culture that casts that shadow.
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