BOOK DETAILS BLACK MARKET

Eric Schlosser writes in his new book that the American black market comprises about 10 percent of the national economy - that adds up to roughly $1 trillion, and it's still growing.

Yet for all the money and influence that arises from this market, few people have ever been truly exposed to its inner workings.  Schlosser, author of the best-selling Fast Food Nation, exposes not only the economic, but also the political and religious aspects of America's shadow economy in his latest book, Reefer Madness.

Appropriately titled, Reefer Madness examines three major components of the black market, the first of which is America's largest cash crop: marijuana.

The annual revenue of America's marijuana crop is an estimated $25 billion.  When compared to the annual revenue of the largest legal cash crop, corn, which is about $19 billion, it raises the question of how and why this plant is so lucrative.

Armed with appalling facts and painstaking research, Schlosser attempts to answer this question, stopping along the way to tell the stories of the paraplegic who is serving life plus 16 years in prison for two ounces of weed found in a pouch on the back of his wheelchair, and the politician who prosecutes first-time marijuana offenders to the fullest extent of the law while ignoring his own children's chronic pot-smoking.

In the second section, Schlosser chooses strawberries as the embodiment of exploitation and injustice for illegal immigrants, many of whom suffer inhumane conditions and slave wages to make a living in this agricultural business.  The average migrant farm worker is paid less than $8,000 a year and is buried in unidentifiable debt.

Schlosser introduces a Mexican worker named Pedro, who had worked picking strawberries for eight years and owed his employer $125,000.  When asked how he managed to get into such severe debt, Pedro replied, "I don't know.  All I know is that I owe it."

Many workers sleep in tiny sheds on dirt floors, have no electricity or heat and have nobody to stand up for their rights while the government turns a blind eye to the issue.  After reading this piece, strawberries will never taste the same.

The last, and by far the longest section of the book, examines the pornography industry and how it has made the jump from taboo perversion to mainstream entertainment.  While explaining this, Schlosser tells the story of Reuben Sturman, regarded as the father of the modern porn industry.  To say the man believed in his cause is a gross understatement.  Of every person mentioned in the book, he is the most admirable.

Surprisingly, the porn industry has a long and colorful history rife with interesting characters and mind-blowing financial clout.  Schlosser writes, "Americans now spend more money at strip clubs than at Broadway theaters, regional and nonprofit theaters and symphony orchestra performances - combined."

Schlosser has a gift for animating facts and figures with people, places and stories.  He humanizes aspects of society generally regarded as immoral.  He leaves his emotions and opinions out of his work, opting to let readers insert their own.

His writing, while fluid and witty, is also soaked with information that can really open eyes and minds and maybe even affect social change.  Schlosser is not an innocuous writer.  His work is not the kind a reader will finish and forget.

Who: Eric Schlosser When: Tonight at 8 p.m.  Where: El Rey Theatre 624 Central Ave.  Price: Free