Cannabis Culture by Patrick Matthews

This is neither a glorify-the-weed article from High Times nor an antipolemic from a neo-Nancy Reaganite.
Matthews (The Wild Bunch), an award-winning British writer on wines, presents a straightforward account of what he sees as the culture of cannabis (a culture as discernible as that of wine), including its history, horticulture, politics, and place in society. Let's face it, though, the stuff is illegal in most of the world, and it's hard to write dispassionately about such a subject. So, even before the postscript, the reader knows that the author, while conceding such positions as the possibility that marijuana is a gateway to the harder stuff, is not about to advocate spraying cannabis fields with paraquat. A bit too technical in places for lay readers, a bit too British for others, this will still be a good buy for academic and larger public libraries.AJim Burns, Ottumwa P.L., IA

# Paperback: 256 pages
# Publisher: Bloomsbury UK; 2nd edition (November 1, 2003)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 0747566143
# ISBN-13: 978-0747566144
# Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5 x 0.8 inches