Blow

How a Small-Town Boy Made $100 Million with the Medellín Cocaine Cartel and Lost It All

By: Bruce Porter

Narrated by: Stephen Bowlby

Length: 13 hrs and 44 mins

Publisher's summary

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, turning a drug used primarily by the entertainment elite into a massive and unimaginably lucrative enterprise - one whose earnings, if legal, would have ranked the cocaine business as the sixth-largest private enterprise in the Fortune 500.

The ride came to a screeching halt when DEA agents and Florida police busted Jung with 300 kilos of coke, effectively unraveling his fortune. But George wasn't about to go down alone. He planned to bring down with him one of the biggest cartel figures ever caught.

With a riveting insider account of the lurid world of international drug smuggling and a supercharged drama of one man's meteoric rise and desperate fall, Bruce Porter chronicles Jung's life using unprecedented eyewitness sources in this critically-acclaimed true-crime classic.

©2017 Blackstone Audio, Inc. (P)2017 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

I waited a long time for this book

I waited a long time for this book and it did not disappoint! There were parts that dragged of course but this deep dive is what I’ve been waiting to read/ hear since I was 16 and first heard about “Boston George”

Wild story

Great story of an American gangster. So many wild stories from the 70s and 80s.

great story

as per usual the book is far superior to the movie! story was highly detailed with the exploits of george jung! have recommended to many people and will continue to do so!

A World Shared

As a former undercover narcotics detective, I found this book both riveting and familiar. Thank you....

If you enjoyed the movie you'll love the book!

I will be listening to this again. The writing and the performance are awesome in my opinion.

Kept My Interest from Start to Finish

Never saw the movie so was spellbound with this story sad and disgusting as it is.

Best of all drug books

I read "BLOW" when it first came out in the 90s. When it became available on Audible (as part of my membership, yet) I had to reconnect. And it was everything I remembered. A fantastic read/listen. It is, for my taste, the best of all the drug smuggling and drug era books mainly because the man at the center of it, George Jung, is from a different time and sensibility. A truly unique character, very likable, an average guy. He came out of the post WW2 50s a bit naive, seeking simple adventure in the form of fun, girls, and calculated risk. What started as simple marijuana runs reminiscent of the wild west inevitably turned into the hard drug smuggling era of cocaine and Colombians. But it was a heck of a ride -- and the book ends in an emotionally moving denouement. The Johnny Depp movie from this book is utter crap. Don't even bother. Read/listen to the book!

movie vs book...

the movie is in my top ten because of the actors and storyline but because of the timeline of events and fatality I appreciate and love the book more

Marijuana-Turned-Cocaine Smuggler's Life

Engaging story of the early days of marijuana smuggling, and how one of the trade's earliest smugglers, George Jung, gradually became involved in the cocaine trade. Jung's chance meeting with a Columbian connection while in prison for his marijuana smuggling takes him down the dangerous road of cocaine smuggling. As the years pass, interpersonal conflicts and his drug addiction take Jung from the top of his game to being dangerously close to being assassinated and finally to prison for his crimes. Written without embellishment and narrated engagingly by Stephen Bowlby, the 14hrs of audio was very easy to sit through while driving or doing chores around the house.

Scary Journey But Sad Ending

The narrators voice was very pleasing and easy to understand the most memorable part in the book was at the end when his dad played the cassette in his car over and over again telling him good bye for the last time from prison very good book very well layed out it becomes more adventurous towards the last 40% of the book.