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Richard Stratton was the unlikeliest of kingpins. A clean-cut Wellesley boy who entered outlaw culture on a trip to Mexico, he saw his search for a joint morph into a thrill-filled dope run smuggling two kilos across the border in his car door. He became a member of the Hippie Mafia, traveling the world to keep America high, living the underground life while embracing the hippie credo, rejecting hard drugs in favor of marijuana and hashish.
In 1979, Wisconsin native Tim McBride hopped into his Mustang and headed south. He was 21, and his best friend had offered him a job working as a crab fisherman in Chokoloskee Island, a town of fewer than 500 people on Florida's Gulf Coast. Easy of disposition and eager to experience life at its richest, McBride jumped in with both feet. But this wasn't a typical fishing outfit.
In 2008 veteran journalist Evan Wright, acclaimed for his New York Times best-selling book Generation Kill and co-writer of the Emmy-winning HBO series it spawned, began a series of conversations with super-criminal Jon Roberts, star of the fabulously successful documentary Cocaine Cowboys. Those conversations would last three years, during which time Wright came to realize that Roberts was much more than the de-facto “transportation chief” of the Medellin Cartel during the 1980s, much more than a facilitator of a national drug epidemic.
In the summer of 1987, Johnny Boone set out to grow and harvest one of the greatest outdoor marijuana crops in modern times. In doing so, he set into motion a series of events that defined him and his associatesas the largest homegrown marijuana syndicate in American history, also known as the Cornbread Mafia. Author James Higdon takes listeners back to the 1970s and ‘80s and the clash between federal and local law enforcement and a band of Kentucky farmers.
Luck of the Devil follows Jack Collins fresh out of the Navy in 1969 as he heads to Miami. There, he falls into the hippie culture of the day. Looking to score free drugs for himself and his friends, he starts dealing blow and pills on the side. Jack eventually grows into the "bigger" game of pills and cocaine as he establishes relationships with the Colombians.
Barry Seal flew cocaine and weapons worth billions of dollars into and out of America in the 1980s. After he became a government informant, Pablo Escobar's Medellin Cartel offered a million for him alive and half a million dead. But his real trouble began after he threatened to expose the dirty dealings of George HW Bush.
Richard Stratton was the unlikeliest of kingpins. A clean-cut Wellesley boy who entered outlaw culture on a trip to Mexico, he saw his search for a joint morph into a thrill-filled dope run smuggling two kilos across the border in his car door. He became a member of the Hippie Mafia, traveling the world to keep America high, living the underground life while embracing the hippie credo, rejecting hard drugs in favor of marijuana and hashish.
In 1979, Wisconsin native Tim McBride hopped into his Mustang and headed south. He was 21, and his best friend had offered him a job working as a crab fisherman in Chokoloskee Island, a town of fewer than 500 people on Florida's Gulf Coast. Easy of disposition and eager to experience life at its richest, McBride jumped in with both feet. But this wasn't a typical fishing outfit.
In 2008 veteran journalist Evan Wright, acclaimed for his New York Times best-selling book Generation Kill and co-writer of the Emmy-winning HBO series it spawned, began a series of conversations with super-criminal Jon Roberts, star of the fabulously successful documentary Cocaine Cowboys. Those conversations would last three years, during which time Wright came to realize that Roberts was much more than the de-facto “transportation chief” of the Medellin Cartel during the 1980s, much more than a facilitator of a national drug epidemic.
In the summer of 1987, Johnny Boone set out to grow and harvest one of the greatest outdoor marijuana crops in modern times. In doing so, he set into motion a series of events that defined him and his associatesas the largest homegrown marijuana syndicate in American history, also known as the Cornbread Mafia. Author James Higdon takes listeners back to the 1970s and ‘80s and the clash between federal and local law enforcement and a band of Kentucky farmers.
Luck of the Devil follows Jack Collins fresh out of the Navy in 1969 as he heads to Miami. There, he falls into the hippie culture of the day. Looking to score free drugs for himself and his friends, he starts dealing blow and pills on the side. Jack eventually grows into the "bigger" game of pills and cocaine as he establishes relationships with the Colombians.
Barry Seal flew cocaine and weapons worth billions of dollars into and out of America in the 1980s. After he became a government informant, Pablo Escobar's Medellin Cartel offered a million for him alive and half a million dead. But his real trouble began after he threatened to expose the dirty dealings of George HW Bush.
Blow is the unlikely story of George Jung's roller-coaster ride from middle-class high school football hero to the heart of Pablo Escobar's Medellín cartel - the largest importer of the United States cocaine supply in the 1980s. Jung's early business of flying marijuana into the United States from the mountains of Mexico took a dramatic turn when he met Carlos Lehder, a young Colombian car thief with connections to the then newly-born cocaine operation in his native land. Together they created a new model for selling cocaine.
In 2011, a 26-year-old libertarian programmer named Ross Ulbricht launched the ultimate free market: the Silk Road, a clandestine website hosted on the Dark Web where anyone could trade anything - drugs, hacking software, forged passports, counterfeit cash, poisons - free of the government's watchful eye. It wasn't long before the media got wind of the new website where anyone - not just teenagers and weed dealers but terrorists and black hat hackers - could buy and sell contraband detection-free.
Doctor Dealer is the story of Larry Lavin, a bright, charismatic young man who rose from his working-class upbringing to win a scholarship to a prestigious boarding school, earn Ivy League college and dental degrees, and buy his family a house in one of Philadelphia's most exclusive suburbs. But behind the facade of his success was a dark secret - at every step of the way he was building the foundation for a cocaine empire that would grow to generate over $60 million in annual sales.
Meet Michael Blutrich, mild-mannered New York lawyer and founder of Scores, the hottest strip club in New York City history, funded by the proceeds of an insurance embezzlement scheme. All Blutrich wanted was to lay low, make the club a success, and put his criminal acts behind him. But the Mafia got involved, and soon the FBI came knocking. Scores became wildly popular, in part thanks to Blutrich's ability to successfully bend the rules of adult entertainment. Unfortunately for Blutrich, it would all soon implode.
From the winter of 2006 through the spring of 2007, 250 marines from Echo Company, Second Battalion, Fourth Marine Regiment, fought daily in the dangerous, dense city streets of Ramadi, Iraq, during the Multi-National Forces Surge ordered by President George W. Bush. The marines' mission: to kill or capture anti-Iraqi forces. Their experience: like being in hell. Now Major Scott A. Huesing, the commander who led Echo Company through Ramadi, takes listeners back to the streets of Ramadi in a visceral, gripping portrayal of modern urban combat.
In the early 1980s, Brian O'Dea was operating a $100 million a year, 120-man drug smuggling business, and had developed a terrifying cocaine addiction. Under increasing threat from the DEA in 1986 for importing seventy-five tons of marijuana into the United States, he quit the trade - and the drugs - and began working with recovering addicts in Santa Barbara. Despite his life change, the authorities caught up with him years later and O'Dea was arrested, tried, and sentenced to ten years at Terminal Island Federal Penitentiary in Los Angeles Harbor.
At first glance Gabriel Cardona is the poster-boy American teenager: great athlete, bright, handsome, and charismatic. But the streets of his border town of Laredo, Texas, are poor and dangerous, and it isn't long before Gabriel abandons his promising future for the allure of the Zetas, a drug cartel with roots in the Mexican military. His younger friend, Bart, as well as others from Gabriel's childhood join him in working for the Zetas, boosting cars and smuggling drugs, eventually catching the eye of the cartel's leadership.
The wild, true story of the Mutiny, the hotel and club that embodied the decadence of Miami's cocaine cowboys heyday - and an inspiration for the blockbuster film Scarface.
In short, this is Pablo Escobar's story in the words of one of his closest confidants, his brother Roberto. It's all here - the brutal violence inside the world of the drug cartel, dealing with American drug forces and the CIA, the problems the Escobars faced when going up against the Colombian mafia, even Pablo's moments of kindness and compassion. As Roberto points out, although many people view Escobar as a monster, thousands still visit his grave every year to mourn him, and revere him as a savior.
What drug lords learned from big business. How does a budding cartel boss succeed (and survive) in the $300 billion illegal drug business? By learning from the best, of course. From creating brand value to fine-tuning customer service, the folks running cartels have been attentive students of the strategy and tactics used by corporations such as Walmart, McDonald's, and Coca-Cola.
The dramatic true story of two brothers living parallel lives on either side of the US-Mexico border - and how their lives converged in a major criminal conspiracy.
An electrifying account of the Cali Cartel beyond its portrayal on Netflix. From the ashes of Pablo Escobar's empire rose an even bigger and more malevolent cartel. A new breed of sophisticated mobsters became the kings of cocaine. Their leader was Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela - known as the Chess Player due to his foresight and calculated cunning.
Told from the viewpoint of an impressionable young entrepreneur named Jay Carter Brown, this memoir quickly dives into the gritty underbelly of the international drug trade. The story begins with minor-league smuggling scams between Canada and the Caribbean that soon escalate to multi-ton shipments of grass and hash from the Caribbean and the Middle East. All goes well for a time, but as the stakes grow higher, inevitable setbacks occur. Drug-runners, police, jealous friends, and rival gangs all contribute to this extraordinary story of a young man who became involved at the highest levels of the drug trade and lived to tell about it.
after about 1 hour I gave up listening. the narrator is the main problem, as he obnoxiously "ssss's" after every word that ends with an S. it'll drive you crazy or at the very least annoy the hell out of you, I promise. in addition, he talks too close to the mic. it kinda makes me wonder why no one did a test run on the mic???
Great story, and Narrator was phenomenal! Couldn't stop listening and while I'm on the right side of the law, the real life account definitely sang a siren's song of money and good living. The epilogue, however... Seemed kind of , well, without ruining it... It's easy for him to say what he says when he was worth millions. Anyway, highly recommend this title whether you are clean like me or into the trade.
I think for every curious mind out there it will be exciting to learn about the world the author describes. It is indeed a very interesting story. While not exactly linear, what I really enjoyed was the insight into all those different kinds of criminals that are out there, how they think and cooperate with each other. And, of course, the action of the operations itself is quite exciting too.
Not only will you enjoy the story in this book, but you'll also get a couple of good insights and life advice as well. Would recommend to anyone.
This is not a story in the conventional sense but simply a collection of anecdotes, each chapter apparently focusing on a new assembly of characters. There appears to be new storyline or character development and listening became pretty tiring after a while (so I never did finish the story). Like sitting at a bar with some guy who insists on telling one pointless story after another.
Any additional comments?
I think that this is a good book but not a great book. The story was good but there was no real climax to the story. First we did this, then we did this, then we did this etc. He life of smuggling was what it was and I'm sure it was interesting and fun but there was no apex to it.
What disappointed you about Smuggler's Blues?
I often look past bad pronunciation in audio books because typically it doesn't bother me - but perhaps that's because I'm Canadian, and when they apply to the US - particularly some US figures - I'm not as familiar with them and I can let them fly; but in this case I couldn't. While the narrator was acceptable in his story-telling, his pronunciation of Canadian names - particularly those around Quebec ( a hard "a" in autostade, or worse, a hard T in Laurentians, were just two examples) - was so appalling that it was a distraction - exacerbated because place names were so central in the opening parts of the book. After 45 minutes I had to stop as he bastardized every place name he mentioned. This is unfortunate because it seemed like a good story - and it's unfortunate that this doesn't come out in the audio preview. In this case, poor pronunciation was a practice that I couldn't put up with for very long; but, like me with other audio books, perhaps others who are less familiar with the names won't be as affected by the narration, and can listen to what is likely a decent yarn.
Any additional comments?
I'm not sure what benchmarks Audible uses in selecting narrators, but given that the narration of a book is so central to the enjoyment one derives, and the frequency with which one ends an audiobook prematurely due to bad narration, I really think this is something Amazon/Audible need to invest more time in reviewing before selecting a narrator - because surely their standards on narration cannot be that far off the average listener on Audible. . . yet from the number of reviews that reference "poor narration", it would seem that they set the bar pretty.
1 of 3 people found this review helpful
Pure insight to a word of dark and dangerous things - love this book
Peace and pancakes