The Devil's Picnic

Recently I finished a book that one of the guys at work reccomended, The Devil's Picnic by Taras Grescoe. Its a really interesting look at the culture of forbidden and banned substances, the history behind them, prohibitions, and how they manage to only increase the demand for the original, and lead to poor knockoffs. He also illustrates how governments and agencies end up trying to regulate things for their financial betterment, with no foresight or hindsight. This may sound dry but the way that Grescoe writes, its very easy to go along with. He also travels the world for these forbidden items; from Norway to Spain to Bolivia. The people he meets along the way, the efforts he makes to track down such things and look at the impact it has on the local and global cultures. I'm not feeling very verbose today so I'll just leave it at that and say its a great read.
Gulley in particular, I think you'd enjoy this.