The story is a lively and anecdotal factual account and a cautionary tale of the local and national events that shaped the destiny of late 1900's forest product and fishing industries in Mendocino County and the world we live in. Thus it is a must read for anyone who longs for development of sustainable communities, who would avoid the mistakes of the past, and who would be a partner in the ultimate triumph of conservation.

"In The Defoliation of America, Amy M. Hay profiles the attitudes, understandings, and motivations of grassroots activists who rose to fight the use of phenoxy herbicides (commonly known as the Agent Orange chemicals) in various aspects of American life during the post-WWII era. First introduced in 1946, these chemicals mimic hormones in broadleaf plants, causing them to, essentially, grow to death while grass, grains, and other monocots remain unaffected. By the 1950s, millions of pounds of chemicals were produced annually for use in brush control, weed eradication, other agricultural applications, and forest management. The herbicides allowed suburban lawns to take root and become iconic symbols of success in American life. The production and application of phenoxy defoliants continued to skyrocket in subsequent years, encouraged by market forces and unimpeded by regulatory oversight. By the late 1950s, however, pockets of skepticism and resistance had begun to appear. The trend picked up steam after 1962, when Rachel Carson's Silent Spring directed mainstream attention to the harm modern chemicals were causing in the natural world. But it wasn't until the Vietnam War, when nearly 40 million gallons of Agent Orange and related herbicides were sprayed to clear the canopy and destroy crops in Southeast Asia, that the long-term damage associated with this group of chemicals began to attract widespread attention and alarm. Using a wide array of sources and an interdisciplinary approach, The Defoliation of America is organized in three parts. Part 1 (1945-70) examines the development, use, and responses to the new chemicals used to control weeds and remove jungle growth. As the herbicides became militarized, critics increasingly expressed concerns about defoliation in protests over US imperialism in Southeast Asia. Part 2 (1965-85) profiles three different women who, influenced by Rachel Carson, challenged the uses of the herbicides in the American West, affecting US chemical policy and regulations in the process. Part 3 (1970-95) revisits the impact and legacies of defoliant use after the Vietnam War. From countercultural containment and Nixon's declaration of the "War on Drugs" to the toxic effects on American and Vietnamese veterans, civilians, and their children, it became increasingly obvious that American herbicides damaged far more than forest canopies. With sensitivity to the role gender played in these various protests, Hay's study of the scientists, health and environmental activists, and veterans who fought US chemical regulatory policies and practices reveals the mechanisms, obligations, and constraints of state and scientific authority in midcentury America. Hay also shows how these disparate and mostly forgotten citizen groups challenged the political consensus and were able to shift government and industry narratives of chemical safety"--

Early in the morning of September 5, 2002, camouflaged and heavily armed Drug Enforcement Administration agents descended on a terraced marijuana garden. The DEA raid on the Wo/Men’s Alliance for Medical Marijuana, a sanctuary for severely ill patients who were using marijuana as medicine, is the riveting opening scene in Weed Land, an up-close journalistic narrative that chronicles a transformative epoch for marijuana in America. From the 1996 passage of California’s Proposition 215, the nation’s first medical marijuana law, through law enforcement raids, clinical studies that revealed medical benefits for cannabis, and the emergence of a lucrative cannabis industry, Weed Land reveals the changing political, legal, economic, and social dynamics around pot. Peter Hecht, an award-winning journalist from The Sacramento Bee, offers an independent, meticulously reported account of the clashes and contradictions of a burgeoning California cannabis culture that stoked pot liberalization across the country.

Greg Campbell, coauthor of the bestselling Flawless and Blood Diamonds, presents a compelling, close-up investigation of a hot-button topic: Americas schizophrenic attitude to the legalization of pot. Campbell, a suburban father whose biggest vice is a cold beer, seems like the last person who would grow weed in his basement. But his attitude changed in 2009, when his home state of Colorado led the nation in mainstreaming medical marijuana. Watching with fascination as above-board and financially thriving dispensaries popped up everywhere, Campbell wondered, “Why not me?” Pot, Inc. chronicles Gregs journey into DIY ganjapreneurialism, as he learns how to cultivate marijuana, examines Americas often unduly harsh laws, and unearths ignorance about pots centuries-old therapeutic value--ignorance the government is desperate to maintain. Along the way, he also gains a very personal insight into the drugs medicinal value that shapes his opinion about legalization.

America’s drug laws have always exerted an unequal and unfair toll on Blacks and Latinos, who are arrested more often than Whites for the possession of illegal drugs and given harsher sentences. In this volume, contributors ask how would marijuana legalization affect communities of color? Is legalization of marijuana necessary to safeguard minority families from a lifetime of hardship and inequality? Who in minority communities favors legalization and why, and do these minority opinions differ from the opinions held by White Americans? This volume also includes analyses of the policy debate by a range of scholars addressing economic, health, and empowerment issues. Comparative lessons from other countries are also analyzed.

“Essentially an encyclopedia of pot, filled with such top 10 lists as ‘best stoner movies’ . . . plus a ‘pot-parazzi’ section with celebrities sneaking a toke.” —Billboard Do you know the difference between burning one and Burning Man? Does using the name Marley as an adjective make total sense to you? Do you chuckle to yourself when the clock strikes 4:20? Are you convinced that the movie Dazed and Confused deserved an Oscar? If you answered “Dude!” to any of these questions, then Pot Culture is the book you’ve been waiting for. For those in the know, it’s the stoner bible. For novices, it’s Pot 101. Either way, Pot Culture encapsulates the history, lifestyle, and language of a subculture that, with every generation, is constantly redefining itself. From exhaustive lists of stoner-friendly movies, music, and television shows to detailed explanations of various stoner tools to celebrity-authored how-tos and an A-Z compendium of slang words and terms, it’s the ultimate encyclopedia of pot. Written by former High Times editors Shirley Halperin (now a senior writer at Entertainment Weekly and a TV talking head) and Steve Bloom (publisher of CelebStoner.com), and featuring contributions by a host of celebrity stoners, including Melissa Etheridge, Maroon 5’s Adam Levine, Redman, Steve-O, and America’s Next Top Model’s Adrianne Curry, Pot Culture provides the answers to everything you ever wanted to know about pot but were too stoned to ask. “This is a fun book that every toker should get their sticky green fingers on. Clever and informative . . . Great book and a must-buy for all us loadies.” —Blogcritics

Two award-winning journalists offer a “cogent, well-sourced and ambitious analysis of the slow decline of cannabis prohibition in the United States” (Kirkus Reviews). In November 2012, voters in Colorado and Washington passed landmark measures to legalize the production and sale of cannabis for social use—a first in the United States and the world. Once vilified as a “gateway drug,” cannabis is now legal for medical use in eighteen states and Washington, DC. Yet the federal government refuses to acknowledge these broader societal shifts. 49.5 percent of all drug-related arrests involve the sale, manufacture, or possession of cannabis. In the first book to explore the new landscape of cannabis in the United States, investigative journalists Alyson Martin and Nushin Rashidian demonstrate how recent cultural and legal developments tie into cannabis’s complex history and thorny politics. Reporting from nearly every state with a medical cannabis law, Martin and Rashidian interview patients, growers, doctors, entrepreneurs, politicians, activists, and regulators. A New Leaf moves from the federal cannabis farm at the University of Mississippi to the headquarters of the ACLU to Oregon’s World Famous Cannabis Café. The result is a lucid account of how cannabis legalization is changing the lives of millions of Americans and easing the burden of the “war on drugs” both domestically and internationally.