100 books like The Emperor Wears No Clothes

By Jack Herer,

Here are 100 books that The Emperor Wears No Clothes fans have personally recommended if you like The Emperor Wears No Clothes. Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of The Pot Book: A Complete Guide to Cannabis: Its Role in Medicine, Politics, Science, and Culture

Robyn Griggs Lawrence Author Of The Cannabis Kitchen Cookbook: Feel-Good Edibles, from Tinctures and Cocktails to Entrées and Desserts

From my list on for people who are curious about cannabis.

Why am I passionate about this?

I discovered cannabis as good medicine in 2009, when my gynecologist recommended it for severe dysmenorrhea. When I couldn’t find a cookbook offering healthy, sophisticated cannabis-infused recipes, I decided to write one. As an amazing group of cannabis chefs taught me how to cook with cannabis and shared their recipes, I fell in love with the plant as well as the open-hearted community that supports it. I followed the Cannabis Kitchen Cookbook, published in 2015, with Pot in Pans: A History of Eating Cannabis, a textbook tracing the plant’s culinary history to ancient Persian and India, in 2019. I’ve learned how to grow my own, and I write regularly about cannabis trends and liberation.

Robyn's book list on for people who are curious about cannabis

Robyn Griggs Lawrence Why did Robyn love this book?

There’s so much to love about this book, a comprehensive guide with information from leading experts like Dr. Lester Grinspoon and Dr. Andrew Weil. Written by a leading psychiatrist, it covers everything from the physiological and psychological effects of cannabis to the politics surrounding its vilification and its re-emergence as medicine. This book was a breakthrough when it was published in 2010—before adult use had been legalized anywhere—and it has become a classic.

By Julie Holland,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Pot Book as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Exploring the role of cannabis in medicine, politics, history, and society, The Pot Bookoffers a compendium of the most up-to-date information and scientific research on marijuana from leading experts, including Lester Grinspoon, M.D., Rick Doblin, Ph.D., Allen St. Pierre (NORML), and Raphael Mechoulam. Also included are interviews with Michael Pollan, Andrew Weil, M.D., and Tommy Chong as well as a pot dealer and a farmer who grows for the U.S. Government. Encompassing the broad spectrum of marijuana knowledge from stoner customs to scientific research, this book investigates the top ten myths of marijuana; its physiological and psychological effects; its risks;…


Book cover of Smoke Signals: A Social History of Marijuana - Medical, Recreational and Scientific

Robyn Griggs Lawrence Author Of The Cannabis Kitchen Cookbook: Feel-Good Edibles, from Tinctures and Cocktails to Entrées and Desserts

From my list on for people who are curious about cannabis.

Why am I passionate about this?

I discovered cannabis as good medicine in 2009, when my gynecologist recommended it for severe dysmenorrhea. When I couldn’t find a cookbook offering healthy, sophisticated cannabis-infused recipes, I decided to write one. As an amazing group of cannabis chefs taught me how to cook with cannabis and shared their recipes, I fell in love with the plant as well as the open-hearted community that supports it. I followed the Cannabis Kitchen Cookbook, published in 2015, with Pot in Pans: A History of Eating Cannabis, a textbook tracing the plant’s culinary history to ancient Persian and India, in 2019. I’ve learned how to grow my own, and I write regularly about cannabis trends and liberation.

Robyn's book list on for people who are curious about cannabis

Robyn Griggs Lawrence Why did Robyn love this book?

Published in 2012, before cannabis liberation had truly begun to take hold, this is a lively look at the illicit cannabis market as it’s morphing into a legitimate industry. Irreverent and richly written, this book tells it like it is, tracing the racist roots of marijuana prohibition to its popularity among Mexican immigrants and jazz musicians and teasing out the vast implications of the US government’s attempts to eradicate it. Everyone needs to know this history, whether they enjoy cannabis or not.

By Martin A. Lee,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Smoke Signals as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

“Hallelujah and glory be to Smoke Signals, Martin Lee’s bodacious new book…Lee chronicles everything and everyone worth chronicling in the annals of marijuana” (High Times).

This is the great American pot story, a dramatic social exploration of a plant that sits at the nexus of political, legal, medical, and scientific discourse. From its ancient origins, to its cutting-edge therapeutic benefits, to its role in a culture war that has never ceased, marijuana has evolved beyond its own illicit subculture into a dynamic, multibillion-dollar industry. Since 1996, when California voters approved Proposition 215, dozens of state and local governments across the…


Book cover of Marijuana Grower's Handbook: Your Complete Guide for Medical and Personal Marijuana Cultivation

Robyn Griggs Lawrence Author Of The Cannabis Kitchen Cookbook: Feel-Good Edibles, from Tinctures and Cocktails to Entrées and Desserts

From my list on for people who are curious about cannabis.

Why am I passionate about this?

I discovered cannabis as good medicine in 2009, when my gynecologist recommended it for severe dysmenorrhea. When I couldn’t find a cookbook offering healthy, sophisticated cannabis-infused recipes, I decided to write one. As an amazing group of cannabis chefs taught me how to cook with cannabis and shared their recipes, I fell in love with the plant as well as the open-hearted community that supports it. I followed the Cannabis Kitchen Cookbook, published in 2015, with Pot in Pans: A History of Eating Cannabis, a textbook tracing the plant’s culinary history to ancient Persian and India, in 2019. I’ve learned how to grow my own, and I write regularly about cannabis trends and liberation.

Robyn's book list on for people who are curious about cannabis

Robyn Griggs Lawrence Why did Robyn love this book?

This is the home grower’s bible, written by an OG. Everything you could ever want to know about growing cannabis—but didn’t know to ask—is packed into these 500 pages, and the photos are pure plant porn. Before Rosenthal walks you through the growing process, from garden design to post-harvest, he provides a comprehensive guide to the cannabis plant and how it grows. This book gave me the confidence to grow my own medicine, and that changed my life.

By Ed Rosenthal,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Marijuana Grower's Handbook as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Ed Rosenthal's legacy handbook contains the foundational knowledge, tools, and methods to enable you to grow great marijuana—inside and out. 

All aspects of cultivation are covered, from the selection of varieties, setting up of the garden, through each stage of plant growth all the way to harvesting. Use efficient technology and save time, labor, and energy. Photographs throughout clarify instructions and show the stunning results possible by following Ed's growing advice.

This classic guide was groundbreaking when it was first released in 2010. For the very latest in technologies, tips, and techniques, including advances in LED lighting, garden design, genetics,…


Book cover of The Lotus and the Bud: Cannabis, Consciousness, and Yoga Practice

Robyn Griggs Lawrence Author Of The Cannabis Kitchen Cookbook: Feel-Good Edibles, from Tinctures and Cocktails to Entrées and Desserts

From my list on for people who are curious about cannabis.

Why am I passionate about this?

I discovered cannabis as good medicine in 2009, when my gynecologist recommended it for severe dysmenorrhea. When I couldn’t find a cookbook offering healthy, sophisticated cannabis-infused recipes, I decided to write one. As an amazing group of cannabis chefs taught me how to cook with cannabis and shared their recipes, I fell in love with the plant as well as the open-hearted community that supports it. I followed the Cannabis Kitchen Cookbook, published in 2015, with Pot in Pans: A History of Eating Cannabis, a textbook tracing the plant’s culinary history to ancient Persian and India, in 2019. I’ve learned how to grow my own, and I write regularly about cannabis trends and liberation.

Robyn's book list on for people who are curious about cannabis

Robyn Griggs Lawrence Why did Robyn love this book?

My friend Chris Kilham, an ethnobotanist, medicine hunter, and yoga master, discovered decades ago that thoughtful ganja intake can enhance yoga practice and pave the way for a life of peace, health, and well-being. This book offers an in-depth guide to blending yoga with cannabis as well as a killer sequence of cannabis-enhanced postures and instructions for breathwork and meditation practice. I refer to this book again and again.

By Christopher S. Kilham,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Lotus and the Bud as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

An in-depth guide to blending the practice of yoga with cannabis

* Examines the physical, mental, spiritual, and energetic effects of cannabis and yoga, including their effects on the nervous system and chakras

* Explains how yoga practice offers a way to tune the human nervous system and how, through the endocannabinoid system, cannabis harmonizes a multitude of functions, from respiration to pain control, in ways that enhance yoga

* Offers an illustrated sequence of cannabis-yoga asanas (postures) developed to awaken kundalini, open energy channels, accelerate healing, and unlock access to unbounded states of consciousness

In India, both yoga and…


Book cover of Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission 1893-94 Volume 1 Report

Chris S. Duvall Author Of The African Roots of Marijuana

From my list on the history of cannabis.

Why am I passionate about this?

I study people-plant relationships from perspectives including ecology, history, cultural studies, and biogeography. Cannabis is certainly the most famous plant I’ve studied. A decade ago I was researching how Africans used an obscure tree in historical Central America, and came across accounts of cannabis use that surprised me. As I dug into cannabis history, I was continually amazed at how little the topic has been researched. It’s a great time to start learning about the plant’s past, because it’s a fresh, new field for professional academics. Cannabis has been portrayed so simplistically for decades, but in reality it’s a complex plant with a complicated history.

Chris' book list on the history of cannabis

Chris S. Duvall Why did Chris love this book?

If you’re interested in cannabis history, you should read original accounts of people in the past who used the plant. There is a huge source of literature, but this book is the most thorough study of cannabis in past society. When it was written by a colonial government commission in the 1890s, India had a centuries-old cannabis economy that supplied the world. Indian farmers, processors, and consumers had incredible expertise, and the British authorities couldn’t decide if this was a good thing or a bad thing. Read this and decide for yourself. And don’t try to buy this book—you’ll find a full copy on Google Books (using the direct link below).

By W. Mackworth Young,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission 1893-94 Volume 1 Report as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

At the end of the 19th century, and in spite of the British authorities working to regulate practice, laws and controls relating to the use of hemp drugs in India continued to be the responsibility of provincial governments. In response to questions in the British Parliament, a Commission was set up in 1893 to examine the situation in Bengal, and on the initiative of the Governor General the scope of the inquiry was broadened to include the whole of British India.


Book cover of Cannabis: Global Histories

Chris S. Duvall Author Of The African Roots of Marijuana

From my list on the history of cannabis.

Why am I passionate about this?

I study people-plant relationships from perspectives including ecology, history, cultural studies, and biogeography. Cannabis is certainly the most famous plant I’ve studied. A decade ago I was researching how Africans used an obscure tree in historical Central America, and came across accounts of cannabis use that surprised me. As I dug into cannabis history, I was continually amazed at how little the topic has been researched. It’s a great time to start learning about the plant’s past, because it’s a fresh, new field for professional academics. Cannabis has been portrayed so simplistically for decades, but in reality it’s a complex plant with a complicated history.

Chris' book list on the history of cannabis

Chris S. Duvall Why did Chris love this book?

Although this book is written by and for professional historians, it’s really accessible and provides a great geographic range of chapter-length cases of the plant’s past. This book is where to go for a sound knowledge of the plant’s worldwide past. The chapters cover places and times ranging from 19th-century France to apartheid-era South Africa and post-revolutionary Iran—and many of the studies aren’t published elsewhere.

By Lucas Richert (editor), Jim Mills (editor),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Cannabis as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Cannabis consumption, commerce, and control in global history, from the nineteenth century to the present day.

This book gathers together authors from the new wave of cannabis histories that has emerged in recent decades. It offers case studies from Africa, Asia, the Americas, Europe, and the Middle East. It does so to trace a global history of the plant and its preparations, arguing that Western colonialism shaped and disseminated ideas in the nineteenth century that came to drive the international control regimes of the twentieth.

More recently, the emergence of commercial interests in cannabis has been central to the challenges…


Book cover of Grass Roots: A History of Cannabis in the American West

Chris S. Duvall Author Of The African Roots of Marijuana

From my list on the history of cannabis.

Why am I passionate about this?

I study people-plant relationships from perspectives including ecology, history, cultural studies, and biogeography. Cannabis is certainly the most famous plant I’ve studied. A decade ago I was researching how Africans used an obscure tree in historical Central America, and came across accounts of cannabis use that surprised me. As I dug into cannabis history, I was continually amazed at how little the topic has been researched. It’s a great time to start learning about the plant’s past, because it’s a fresh, new field for professional academics. Cannabis has been portrayed so simplistically for decades, but in reality it’s a complex plant with a complicated history.

Chris' book list on the history of cannabis

Chris S. Duvall Why did Chris love this book?

Two books entitled Grass Roots were published in 2017. I recommend the other one too (by Emily Dufton), but for this list I chose Nick Johnson’s book because it’s less well known. Dufton provides an excellent social history of cannabis in the U.S. Johnson gives us an environmental history of the western U.S. that is remarkable because of its many facets, including migrant labor in the 1920s, indoor horticulture starting in the 1970s, and pollution in national forests in the present. Today’s marijuana is hugely damaging to the environment, and Johnson argues that federal legalization, and the regulation that would accompany it, are necessary to make marijuana sustainable.

By Nick Johnson,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Grass Roots as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Marijuana legalization is unfolding across the American West, but cultivation of the cannabis plant is anything but green. Unregulated outdoor grows are polluting ecosystems, high-powered indoor grows are churning out an excessive carbon footprint, and the controversial crop is becoming an agricultural boon just as the region faces an unprecedented water crisis.

To understand how we got here and how the legal cannabis industry might become more environmentally sustainable, Grass Roots looks at the history of marijuana growing in the American West, from early Mexican American growers on sugar beet farms to today's sophisticated greenhouse gardens. Over the past eighty…


Book cover of The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World

Paolo Squatriti Author Of Weeds and the Carolingians: Empire, Culture, and Nature in Frankish Europe, AD 750-900

From my list on how plants make human history happen.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am an early medieval European historian who, in the last decades, branched out into environmental history. Having grown up in semi-rustic conditions, I have always been curious about rural things and past agricultural practices. I watch carefully as plows slice through fields, mind how birds and bees weave together their ecosystems, and pay attention to the phases by which trees put on and take off their leaves. Now a professional historian, my job involves reading a lot of rural and environmental history, so I have developed a good sense of books that mix academic rigor and approachability.

Paolo's book list on how plants make human history happen

Paolo Squatriti Why did Paolo love this book?

“The face that launched a thousand ships,” as Homer would say. Pollan’s witty and well-written treatment of how plants think and act to modulate their environments inspired 21st-century “critical plant studies” in the Anglophone world, including mine.

The book starts you thinking about the thousands of ways plants elbow into your world and how much they matter to your existence on earth, in economic but also spiritual senses. You end up agape in wonder.

By Michael Pollan,

Why should I read it?

9 authors picked The Botany of Desire as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A farmer cultivates genetically modified potatoes so that a customer at McDonald's half a world away can enjoy a long, golden french fry. A gardener plants tulip bulbs in the autumn and in the spring has a riotous patch of colour to admire. Two simple examples of how humans act on nature to get what we want. Or are they? What if those potatoes and tulips have evolved to gratify certain human desires so that humans will help them multiply? What if, in other words, these plants are using us just as we use them? In blending history, memoir and…


Book cover of Marijuana Boom: The Rise and Fall of Colombia's First Drug Paradise

Chris S. Duvall Author Of The African Roots of Marijuana

From my list on the history of cannabis.

Why am I passionate about this?

I study people-plant relationships from perspectives including ecology, history, cultural studies, and biogeography. Cannabis is certainly the most famous plant I’ve studied. A decade ago I was researching how Africans used an obscure tree in historical Central America, and came across accounts of cannabis use that surprised me. As I dug into cannabis history, I was continually amazed at how little the topic has been researched. It’s a great time to start learning about the plant’s past, because it’s a fresh, new field for professional academics. Cannabis has been portrayed so simplistically for decades, but in reality it’s a complex plant with a complicated history.

Chris' book list on the history of cannabis

Chris S. Duvall Why did Chris love this book?

The association between Colombia and cocaine is strong in popular culture, but the cocaine economy rose upon the country’s experience with marijuana production and trafficking starting in the 1970s. Britto completed remarkable research, on the ground with people who were involved in marijuana trading. This is one of a few books that offer such a window into the illegal world of cannabis.

By Lina Britto,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Marijuana Boom as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Before Colombia became one of the world's largest producers of cocaine in the 1980s, traffickers from the Caribbean coast partnered with American buyers in the 1970s to make the South American country the main supplier of marijuana for a booming US drug market, fueled by the US hippie counterculture. How did Colombia become central to the creation of an international drug trafficking circuit? Marijuana Boom is the story of this forgotten history. Combining deep archival research with unprecedented oral history, Lina Britto deciphers a puzzle: Why did the Colombian coffee republic, a model of Latin American representative democracy and economic…


Book cover of Hashish

Chris S. Duvall Author Of The African Roots of Marijuana

From my list on the history of cannabis.

Why am I passionate about this?

I study people-plant relationships from perspectives including ecology, history, cultural studies, and biogeography. Cannabis is certainly the most famous plant I’ve studied. A decade ago I was researching how Africans used an obscure tree in historical Central America, and came across accounts of cannabis use that surprised me. As I dug into cannabis history, I was continually amazed at how little the topic has been researched. It’s a great time to start learning about the plant’s past, because it’s a fresh, new field for professional academics. Cannabis has been portrayed so simplistically for decades, but in reality it’s a complex plant with a complicated history.

Chris' book list on the history of cannabis

Chris S. Duvall Why did Chris love this book?

This is a fascinating book, for two reasons. First, Clarke is a founder of modern cannabis studies. His knowledge of the plant’s history, botany, horticulture, and processing is vast, and arose through hard work starting in the 1970s, when “cannabis research” was a joke. Academics can find much to quibble about this book, but it gives an enjoyable and pretty sound history of hashish, which is a high-potency form of psychoactive cannabis. Second, for those who have no knowledge of drug production, the photos and descriptions of cannabis processing are a remarkable window into a hidden world.

By Robert Connell Clarke,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Hashish as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This lavishly illustrated compendium of all things hashish appeals to illicit substance consumers, medical users, and history buffs alike.Clarke traces hashish origins, history, consumption, production and chemistry, from earliest times to the present. Traditional methods of collecting cannabis resin and processing it into hashish are described in detail. Includes bibliographical references and index.


Book cover of The Pot Book: A Complete Guide to Cannabis: Its Role in Medicine, Politics, Science, and Culture
Book cover of Smoke Signals: A Social History of Marijuana - Medical, Recreational and Scientific
Book cover of Marijuana Grower's Handbook: Your Complete Guide for Medical and Personal Marijuana Cultivation

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