Reefer Gladness: Stories, Essays, and Riffs on Marijuana

Bestselling author Michael Konik (The Man With the $100,000 Breasts; Ella in Europe; The Smart Money) abstained from using, or even trying marijuana until he was nearly 40. Then he went to Amsterdam. No longer able to dismiss pot as an herbal evil, he began to celebrate its salutary effects. Seven years later, Konik has penned a provocative and intelligent examination of America's most politically potent plant. Reefer Gladness: Stories, Essays, and Riffs on Marijuana explores this emotionally-charged subject through an innovative lens. It's an entertaining, elegant, and consistently heady study of a simple weed with the power to transform American society. Konik's pungent prose provides a literary contact high. His vivid characters, the regular (and irregular) people from every stratum of society who make marijuana a part of their lives, blaze off the page. Reefer Gladness is nonfiction and fiction, humorous and serious, a fascinating hybrid of reality and imagination. It's a great read--whether or not you enjoy marijuana.

The author of acclaimed books on gambling, golf, and travel, Michael Konik was a TV commentator on poker broadcasts, a columnist for Delta Air Lines SKY magazine and co-star of the short-lived Animal Planet series "Ella & Me," based on his bestselling dog book Ella in Europe. He's presently a composer and music producer at his jazz FreeHam Records.