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

 

DNF @ p.30

This book has been sitting in my room unread for years. I bought it because it's written by the same guy who wrote FAST FOOD NATION, a book I read and enjoyed as a teenager and plan on rereading soon as part of my not-so-secret-project. But before I revisited FFN, I wanted to check out this edgy-looking book about the marijuana, illegal immigrant labor, and porn industries.

I ended up really not liking this book. I struggled through the marijuana chapter which was woefully out of date (this book was published in 2003) and skimmed through the other two sections before deciding that this wasn't for me. It was written during a different time, with different rules and different standards, and I could kind of get a glimpse of how well this book had aged from the very intro, where the author refers to illegal immigrants as "illegals" in the text and when several of the top-grossing American companies are listed, Facebook and Google were both glaringly absent (again, 2003).

Maybe this was topical twenty years ago, but it isn't now.

1 out of 5 stars