Roffman's debut adeptly straddles the line between academia and narrative nonfiction, delivering a slice of history that...
A memoir/treatise on marijuana that rises above most similar discussions.
Now that marijuana is legal in two states—and will likely be so throughout the remainder of the country in the not-too-distant future—it’s likely that the next generations of pot smokers won't realize how the drug's illegality had such a profound effect on pop culture. For instance, if Paul McCartney had access to all the marijuana his heart desired, would Rubber Soul have been Rubber Soul? that marijuana is readily accessible, within the next decade, the war on weed will be looked upon the way we view Prohibition: with a great big roll of eyes. All of which is why Roffman's (Emeritus, Social Work/Univ. of Washington) book is so important—so we'll remember. The author writes about the drug's history and his personal relationship with the leaf with an accessible voice that makes the contextual material read as smoothly as the anecdotal. However, it’s the personal stories that help the book stand out from the plethora of marijuana-focused books that have been released over the past several years. As a social work officer in Saigon during the Vietnam War, Roffman witnessed the positive effects that marijuana can have on mental health. After the war, he came to learn that weed was also a great help in alleviating physical suffering. Granted, this is all now common knowledge, but the author’s personal journey is so engaging that we're happy to relearn lessons that will permanently reshape culture as we know it. “These four plus decades of tilting at marijuana myths while seeking common ground have generated many stories,” he writes. “Perhaps they’ll be useful for readers finding themselves on a similar quest.”
Roffman's debut adeptly straddles the line between academia and narrative nonfiction, delivering a slice of history that even teetotalers will appreciate.Pub Date: April 20, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-60598-546-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2014
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
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