Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market (edit title)

Shelfari edited the description of Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market Saturday, August 1 2009.

• 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.

Shelfari edited the contributors of Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market Thursday, July 23 2009.

• Added a contributor: Eric Schlosser: (Primary Author)

Shelfari edited the first sentence of Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market Friday, July 17 2009.

• ADAM SMITH BELIEVED in a God that was kind and wise and all powerful.