During 2002, Eric Schlosser’s history-cum-polemic Fast Food Nation sold almost 200,000 copies in its UK paperback alone. His next target? America’s underground vices: “Today, revenues from porn match Hollywood receipts and exceed sales of rock. Some 20 years after Reagan’s ‘War on Drugs’ began, marijuana cultivation has probably overtaken corn ? worth $19 billion annually ? as the nation’s most lucrative cash crop. In Los Angeles County, 28 per cent of all workers are paid in untraceable cash: ‘a triumph of underground practices and values’. Everywhere you look, the underground has flooded the mainstream. Together, these essays build into a secret history of America’s favourite vices.”