March 23, 2004
Contact: George Yatchisin
(805) 893-3494
e-mail: yatchisin-g@ sa.ucsb.edu

Fast Food Nation author Eric Schlosser explores underground economies in his revealing lecture Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market at UCSB Campbell Hall

Summary Facts:

• Eric Schlosser
• Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market
• Schlosser is also the author of the best-selling Fast Food Nation
• Wednesday, April 28
• 8 pm / UCSB Campbell Hall
• General public $10 / UCSB students $8
• Tickets/Information: UCSB Arts & Lectures at (805) 893-3535

Provocative author Eric Schlosser, best-selling writer of the influential Fast Food Nation, will deliver the lecture Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market on Wednesday, April 28 at 8 pm in UCSB Campbell Hall. Schlosser’s presentation, based on his recent book of the same name, is a riveting exposé of the underground economies of pot, porn and illegal immigrants.

The underground economy is vast, comprising perhaps 10 percent or more of America’s overall economy, and it’s on the rise. Eric Schlosser charts this growth, and finds its roots in the nexus of ingenuity, greed, idealism and hypocrisy that is American culture. A powerful blend of big-picture analysis, intrepid reporting and fascinating character studies, Schlosser’s talk will be sure to illuminate the underbelly of the American marketplace. As in Fast Food Nation, Schlosser’s inquiry starts with fascinating vignettes of hidden realms—ingenious, multimillionaire porn brokers, the Midwestern marijuana industry, the hillsides and garages where strawberry pickers sleep. The San Francisco Chronicle writes, “Schlosser is a prodigiously gifted reporter with an unerring nose for the big story hiding in plain sight.”

Schlosser’s first book Fast Food Nation has been on The New York Times bestseller list for over a year (hardcover and paperback combined). In an interview Schlosser claims the book “was an attempt to look behind the cheery façade of America’s service economy.”

A groundbreaking work of investigation and cultural history that has changed the way America thinks about the way it eats, the book examines how fast food has hastened the malling of our landscape, widened the chasm between rich and poor, fueled an epidemic of obesity, and propelled the juggernaut of American cultural imperialism abroad. Time Out New York hailed the book as “part cultural history, part investigative journalism and part polemic...intelligent and highly readable critique.”

Schlosser is a graduate of Princeton University with a B.A. in history. After years trying to succeed as a playwright and novelist, he turned to journalism. A correspondent for the Atlantic Monthly since 1996, his work has also appeared in Rolling Stone, Granta and The New Yorker. (Reefer Madness is a collection of three essays, portions of which originally appeared in the Atlantic, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker and U.S. News & World Report.) A meticulous researcher, Schlosser works without assistants, preferring to pore over written materials and then immerse himself “in the field,” as it were. Even when exploring underground communities, he found people willing to be interviewed; he has said, “A lot of these people feel cut off from the media, from the mainstream. Once it became clear that I wasn’t a narc or wasn’t going to rat anybody out, it was hard to get some of them to stop talking.”

Currently Schlosser is working on a book examining America’s prison system. “It’s remarkable to me that back in 1970, we were closing prisons,” he has said in an interview with Publishers Weekly. “Today, we have the largest prison population in the history of the world. No one has ever built as many prisons or put as many people behind bars. So I’m looking at what’s been going on. How did the land of the free become the biggest jailer in the history of mankind?”

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution calls Schlosser “an unapologetic muckraker and a talented writer, inspired as much by stylist John McPhee as by gonzo Hunter S. Thompson. He is a journalist with a mission—but not an agenda.”

Courtesy of Chaucer’s Books, books by Eric Schlosser will be available for purchase and signing.

Eric Schlosser is presented by UCSB Arts & Lectures. Tickets for the event are $10 for the general public and $8 for UCSB students.

For tickets or more information,
call UCSB Arts & Lectures at (805) 893-3535.

Editor: For photos, please call
George Yatchisin at (805) 893-3494.