Here is a book that tells the story of hemp in a well-researched and catchy way. The authors bring us back to the roots of the hemp story, starting out with a riverbank scene of cormorants fishing in the waters of China some millenia in the past. Using solid sources, they present us with the facts about the use of hemp over the years, including the various intrigues that went on between Britain, France, Russia and the US. In the years when hemp was the most traded commodity in the world, some nations even went so far as to make pre-emptive strikes on the hemp stash of others.
Russian hemp was thus the object of envy among maritime powers, but it was at times the object of contempt among zealous lawmakers in the US who wished to see domestic hemp used by the navy; ironically, it was the navy which insisted on using Russian, rather than American.
Whilst Russian hemp was imported as an article of necessity, American hemp continued to be grown, especially in the southern states. The Civil War, however, did much damage to that trade, which moved west. From then its history took many twists and turns, with WWI occasioning a surge in production, Henry Ford using it for automobiles, and in 1937, a law that effectively wiped out the hemp trade inthe US.
The title of the book is taken from a 1942 film made by the US government which was used to encourage hemp farming in WWII. The irony of their promotion of hemp sets an interesting tone throughout the book, which, in four parts - World Wide History, Uses and Applications, Methods, and The Many Fields of Hemp, covers the subject more completely than any work to date. Its pages are generously graced with images, some very rare, gleaned from older books on hemp that are not well known at all, some current photos, and a good amount of original artwork as well, making this book a pleasant read, perhaps one of the best designed books of the year. There is a resource guide, a bibliography and an index, and, one is pleased to note, hundreds of source notes making this an authorative work on a complex subject.
296 pages, colour frontispiece, 160 illustrations, fold-out, index. A4 - The work will be (quarto) size, limpbound. First section on Treefree hemp paper.
Authors: Kenyon Gibson, Nick Mackintosh, Cindy Mackintosh, Paul Benhaim, Mina Hegaard, John Quincy Adams (post.), Sam Heslop et al. Foreword by Woody Harrelson. London, Whitaker Publisihing, 2006.
