Copyright 1981 The Book Publishing Company.
ISBN 0-913990-40-X.
$10.00, hardcover nonfiction, 262 pps.

"Rendered Infamous is an unsentimental look at recent American history through the eyes of a marine in Korea, an inmate behind the walls of the Tennessee State Penitentiary, and the founder of an international relief and development organization. Stephen Gaskin is all of these people. He is also a clear-eyed observer who offers in this book a cure for political naiveté and a call for coalition."

"I see [Stephen Gaskin] as a cross between Maclcolm X and Albert Schweitzer: laid-back, cool, and nonviolent. It's Gaskin's knack... to render the core of his thoughts on subjects ranging from prison life to gun control to war and peace in a language as plain and commonsensical as the language used to write the Constitution.

"[Rendered Infamous] is not kiss-and-tell-book. In chapters 22 and 27, Gaskin declines to list the media folk he shared joints with, the cops who told him they smoked pot "while they were arresting me for smoking marijuana," and "all of the counselors and psychologists who told me they smoked marijuana while they were candling my head to see if I was crazy because I smoked marijuana." —Dolph Honicker, Tennessean Sunday Bookcase

An Excerpt: Usury and Sharp Practices

The myth of the free market assumes some parity among the horsetraders. In olden times, there were proscriptions against usury that were in effect from the church, when usury was against the law. Not only usury, but there was a level short of usury which was considered, if not a legal matter, at least an ecclesiastical matter, and people would be warned against the un-Christian nature of "sharp practices." Sharp practices included the kind of farming mentality that confused husbandry with being sure to plant the fruit trees on the side of the property close to the fence, so the shade would fall on your neighbor's property and the fruit would fall on your own.

But the Bible taught that the first two rows along the edge of the road were dedicated to passing travelers who in those days of non-frozen or concentrated foods, could not possibly carry enough food for a very long journey, and probably didn't have any actual money on their persons as they traveled.

These were cultural norms. Some may say that is naive and it was easier then, and there are more people now and times are harder. But two rows alongside the field of a giant complicated farm is virtually insignificant. There are huge quantities of food produced and harvested these days, but two rows could still be done without damage to the industry. It is merely that sharp practices have become "normal", which is to say not right or acceptable, but done by so many people that the curve describing the frequency of that action is near the norm.