| The Sentence Salvo |
There are so many books relating, directly and indirectly, to the world of cannabis that it can be tough to know which ones to buy.
With a plethora of volumes on growing, using, concentrating, and cooking with cannabis, as well as tomes related to the culture and lifestyle associated with it, the reader with an adventurous streak can stock a library or fill an e-reader.
But beyond the grow books (I recommend Rosenthal, Cervantes and West) and the basic histories of marijuana (I recommend mine), books which are more about the (counter-) culture surrounding weed rather than weed itself are harder to pigeonhole and, thus, often harder to find.
Here are five of the best books on the culture of marijuana that came to our attention this year.
The Audacity of Dope by sports writer Monte Dutton is unusual in that Dutton has, until now, been well known and celebrated for his spin on NASCAR racing. Dutton’s controversial new novel features a man who becomes a hero against his own wishes.
Riley Mansfield, the lead character, isn’t a conventional hero. He writes songs for a living, smokes pot for recreation and basically just wants to live and let live. But when he foils an apparent terrorist plot he is thrust into the spotlight, which is exactly where he doesn’t want to be.
Suddenly, everyone wants a piece of the marketable new “hero,” including both major political parties. They aren’t willing to take no for an answer, partly because it’s an election year and partly because what happened on the plane may be more complicated than it appears.
Mansfield and his girl Friday, Melissa Franklin, lead the government and the Republicans on a sometimes merry, sometimes painful, sometimes lucky chase. Along the way, they stumble across some unlikely friends — a Democrat strategist, a Rolling Stone writer, a pair of sympathetic FBI agents — and also some ruthless enemies.
Theirs is a love affair of sex, drugs and country-folk set against a backdrop of political scheming, hidden agendas and an unraveling plan to keep control of the government.
The Audacity of Dope by Monte Dutton, Neverland Publishing Company LLC [2011], $16.95