Overview

Eric Schlosser explores three of the most prominent and least understood features of globalization: drugs, pornography and migrant labour. ""Reefer Madness"" traces the history of the contemporary war on drugs from its origins in Reagan's social conservatism though to its profound impact on America's civil society and on the country's relations with the wider world. ""An Empire of the Obscene"" tells the story of Reuben Sturman, who most effectively exploited economies of scale to create a business that now saturates America and the world with graphic sexual imagery. ""In the Strawberry Fields"" shows how public demand for a soft red fruit is causing mass migration from Central America and changing California's political economy forever.

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9780141010762

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Reviews

Reefer Madness is earnest, impassioned, and assiduously researched.

"""Reefer Madness is earnest, impassioned, and assiduously researched."""

From Eric Schlosser, bestselling author of Fast Food Nation, this is an absolutely riveting account of the workings of America's underground economy. Taking three case studies, 'Reefer Madness', 'Strawberry Fields' and 'An Empire of the Obscene', Schlosser exposes the ludicrous legal, economic and moral contradictions that arise when government legislation on drug control, labour relations and obscenity is a piecemeal and opportunistic response to protecting the liberties, incomes and prejudices of affluent, conservative, white, Americans. Focusing by turn on the US's massive homegrown marijuana industry, the dependence of Californian fruit farmers on illegal immigrant labour, and the growth of the modern sex industry, Schlosser combines historical research with interview testimony in a swingeing critique of the causes and consequences of America's vast subterranean economy. Highlighting the fact that most of its growth has occurred in the past 30 years, he argues that this illegal economic activity is a crucial support for more mainstream markets. For example, he claims that the US dollar is the unofficial currency of the global underground economy and that three-quarters of all $100 bills circulate outside their country of origin, amounting to a gigantic interest-free loan to the US treasury. Schlosser's skilful combination of well-chosen facts and figures with moving and balanced insights into the lives of individuals caught up in the contemporary serfdom of migrant labour or within the bizarrely inconsistent federal system of sentencing for drug-related offences is guaranteed to stir his reader to react. Read this book and you will probably feel compelled to recite selected passages aloud to friends in a tone of outrage. Indeed, Schlosser specifically invites Americans to reconsider their dearly held beliefs on life, liberty and the pursuit of property. For readers outside the US it is a compelling insight into the shadowy depths of the richest nation in the world. (Kirkus UK)

Author Information

Eric Schlosser is an author and investigative journalist based in New York. His first book, FAST FOOD NATION, was a major international bestseller (Allen Lane, 2001). His work has appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, Rolling Stone and the Guardian.

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