Kings of Cocaine

Inside the Medellin Cartel - An Astonishing True Story of Murder Money and International Corruption

By: Guy Gugliotta, Jeff Leen

Narrated by: Paul Woodson

Length: 14 hrs and 41 mins

Publisher's summary

This is the story of the most successful cocaine dealers in the world: Pablo Escobar Gaviria, Jorge Luis Ochoa Vasquez, Carlos Lehder Rivas, and Jose Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha.

In the 1980s, they controlled more than 50 percent of the cocaine flowing into the United States. The cocaine trade is capitalism on overdrive - supply meeting demand on exponential levels. Here you'll find the story of how the modern cocaine business started and how it turned a ragtag group of hippies and sociopaths into regal kings as they stumbled from small-time suitcase smuggling to levels of unimaginable sophistication and daring.

The $2 billion dollar system eventually became so complex that it required the manipulation of world leaders, corruption of revolutionary movements, and the worst kind of violence to protect.

©1989 Guy Gugliotta and Jeff Leen (P)2018 Tantor

Wow Very Detailed

Plenty of details plenty of villains and very detailed some people might get lost in the weeds but everything ties into each other

great book

really takes you inside the cocaine machine of the medellin cartel and the others involved.

No other book like it

This is straight from the top level reporting of the 1980s drug wars. The book is a gem from the era that has stood the test of time. Not big on conjecture or opinion. Just solid reporting.

Kept me engrossed from start to finsh

Really enjoyed this. It was like a jigsaw puzzle and I was invested in the story. Didn't drag or slow it was really enjoyable. Planning on reading it again.

The Jackal

Awesome audiobook it broke down lots of the players in the coke game from the US and from Colombia Carlos was one of the main focal points. it makes me wanna go back and watch Blow again just to see how sneaky his character is. Great book give it a listen

very informative

very informative fills in the blanks that the cocaine cowboys left out of there story

Excellent book

Very much enjoyed this book and excellent detail of the drug cartel. Highly recommend reading this

an awsome book

this book was alot better than i thought it would be. after reading several other books and seeing several other documenteries on the world of cocain and some of the people and events mentioned and talked about in this book this book touches on and goes into deeper detail on all of them. it was great to get more detail and different views on those events and books and shows. if you really enjoy this topic and learning about the world of drugs and cocain and their history and smuggling you will enjoy this book. even more so if you have seen and read some of those others and are familiar with some of the other people and events and stories and points of view talked about in this book. bruce porters book "blow" and magnolia films "cocain cowbows" are among those. the only reason i'm not giving 5 stars is that it seemed to end before the sory and history was over. seemed like there should have been a few more chapters in there. but what was there was awsome. so for me it was absolutely worth the credit.

Empire of corruption.

The rise of the Medillin cartel and it's corrosive effect on society. Get a ground level view of how criminals and drugs devastated the Americas in the 1980

Almost Perfect.

This book well written, but since its copyright date is 1989, it's incomplete and MAJOR parts of the story are missing. the epilogue rushes through some of them. Still, it's probably the most informative audio book on the history of Medellin cartel. It was also refreshing to finally listen to a book on cartel history that wasn't written with the authors political views in mind.

The narrator is top notch too.