Reefer Madness

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. Reefer Madness shows how the underbelly of the American marketplace has far-reaching influence on our society. Exposing three American mainstays - pot, porn, and illegal immigrants - Schlosser shows how the black market has burgeoned over the past several decades. He draws compelling parallels between underground and overground: how tycoons and gangsters rise and fall, how new technology 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.