Rigorous analysis buoyed by a deep sense of humanity.
A journalist turned “ganjapreneur” examines America’s schizophrenic attitude toward marijuana.
A few years ago, after the Obama administration indicated that it wasn’t interested in busting medical marijuana growers around the country, pot enthusiasts in Colorado rejoiced. That joy was short-lived, however, as the authorities later suggested that the era of worry-free toking was greatly exaggerated—even for state-sanctioned dispensaries in that state. Campbell (Blood Diamonds: Tracing the Deadly Path of the World's Most Precious Stones, 2002, etc.) recounts the ensuing panic and the long history of oppressive U.S. drug policy toward marijuana. Amid the careful research rich in salient statistics and telling case studies, the author presents moving personal histories of people whose only crime was trying to relieve their own chronic pain or help out a sick friend. The author juxtaposes these stories with those of his often-hilarious adventures in at-home marijuana cultivation. His angst is palpable as he spends sleepless nights worrying that the noxious odors exuding from his basement “farmhouse” will finally tip off the neighbors and that the next knock on the door will be a helmeted SWAT team with an arrest warrant. Because of these personal experiences, Campbell is able to provide invaluable insight into what medical marijuana growers in the United States endure each day. The hypocrisy throughout is evident, but, writes the author, Drug Enforcement Agency honchos remain true believers, convinced, despite ample evidence to the contrary, that marijuana is truly the devil’s weed. Campbell’s tireless digging, both physically and figuratively, provides a treasure-trove of information that can only encourage intelligent debate over the future of marijuana prohibition.
Rigorous analysis buoyed by a deep sense of humanity.Pub Date: June 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4027-7925-1
Page Count: 262
Publisher: Sterling
Review Posted Online: April 29, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A heartfelt if somewhat unsurprising view of old age by the former president. Carter (Living Faith, 1996, etc.) succinctly evaluates the evolution and current status of federal policies concerning the elderly (including a balanced appraisal of the difficulties facing the Social Security system). He also meditates, while drawing heavily on autobiographical anecdotes, on the possibilities for exploration and intellectual and spiritual growth in old age. There are few lightning bolts to dazzle in his prescriptions (cultivate family ties; pursue the restorative pleasures of hobbies and socially minded activities). Yet the warmth and frankness of Carter’s remarks prove disarming. Given its brevity, the work is more of a call to senior citizens to reconsider how best to live life than it is a guide to any of the details involved.
Pub Date: Oct. 26, 1998
ISBN: 0-345-42592-8
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1998
A Churchill-ian view of native history—Ward, that is, not Winston—its facts filtered through a dense screen of ideology.
Custer died for your sins. And so, this book would seem to suggest, did every other native victim of colonialism.
Inducing guilt in non-native readers would seem to be the guiding idea behind Dunbar-Ortiz’s (Emerita, Ethnic Studies/California State Univ., Hayward; Blood on the Border: A Memoir of the Contra War, 2005, etc.) survey, which is hardly a new strategy. Indeed, the author says little that hasn’t been said before, but she packs a trove of ideological assumptions into nearly every page. For one thing, while “Indian” isn’t bad, since “[i]ndigenous individuals and peoples in North America on the whole do not consider ‘Indian’ a slur,” “American” is due to the fact that it’s “blatantly imperialistic.” Just so, indigenous peoples were overwhelmed by a “colonialist settler-state” (the very language broadly applied to Israelis vis-à-vis the Palestinians today) and then “displaced to fragmented reservations and economically decimated”—after, that is, having been forced to live in “concentration camps.” Were he around today, Vine Deloria Jr., the always-indignant champion of bias-puncturing in defense of native history, would disavow such tidily packaged, ready-made, reflexive language. As it is, the readers who are likely to come to this book—undergraduates, mostly, in survey courses—probably won’t question Dunbar-Ortiz’s inaccurate assertion that the military phrase “in country” derives from the military phrase “Indian country” or her insistence that all Spanish people in the New World were “gold-obsessed.” Furthermore, most readers won’t likely know that some Ancestral Pueblo (for whom Dunbar-Ortiz uses the long-abandoned term “Anasazi”) sites show evidence of cannibalism and torture, which in turn points to the inconvenient fact that North America wasn’t entirely an Eden before the arrival of Europe.
A Churchill-ian view of native history—Ward, that is, not Winston—its facts filtered through a dense screen of ideology.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-8070-0040-3
Page Count: 296
Publisher: Beacon Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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