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PABLO ESCOBAR

Name: PABLO ESCOBAR
Author: Juan Pablo Escobar
ISBN: 978-1-250-10462-5

MY FATHER

by Juan Pablo Escobar translated by Andrea Rosenberg ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 30, 2016

Uneven but will satisfy curiosity regarding the tawdry reality of childhood within a criminal family.

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Biography of drug kingpin Pablo Escobar (1949-1993) by his understandably conflicted son.

Escobar, an Argentina-based architect and subject of the documentary Sins of My Father, sees his father’s infamy alongside qualities of a devoted family man: “he always had us in his heart, even as he used terror to intimidate his enemies.” The author intends not to detail his father’s smuggling empire but to document the fuller life of the man—and settle some scores regarding his father’s siblings. He says at the outset, “I wish to publicly ask my father’s victims…for forgiveness.” In his view, neither Escobar’s rural youth nor early years as an enterprising small-time criminal prefaced his war against society. By 1975, early forays into cocaine smuggling made him a young millionaire; years of success followed, giving the author a childhood of absurd luxury. However, in 1982, Escobar erred in entering politics. “He mistakenly believed that he could traffic drugs while also holding a seat in Congress,” he writes. Over the next two years, his public exposure led to calls for prosecution and extradition, provoking Escobar toward a campaign of bombings, assassinations, and kidnappings. Eventually, he became a fugitive (often accompanied by his family) and expanded his war to the Cali cartel. This part of the narrative becomes jumbled, as Escobar simultaneously negotiates with the government and pursues violent schemes through a dwindling cadre of followers. “I felt powerless in the face of my father’s brutal methods,” writes the author. “He no longer listened to anyone’s advice.” Following Escobar’s inevitable-seeming demise, the author and his mother had to negotiate for their lives with his enemies. Escobar writes earnestly, relying on descriptive detail, though it can feel artificially reconstructed, particularly regarding the often stagey dialogue. The author is unable to explain how the warm, quirky father he presents and the criminal who normalized widespread violence within drug smuggling are the same person. This results in frequent dissonance.

Uneven but will satisfy curiosity regarding the tawdry reality of childhood within a criminal family.

Pub Date: Aug. 30, 2016

ISBN: 978-1-250-10462-5

Page Count: 368

Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: June 29, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2016

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | TRUE CRIME | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.

Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.

Well-told and admonitory.

Pub Date: June 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-06-074486-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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INTO THE WILD

by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...

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The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).

Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)