Essential reading for any aficionado of espionage scandals and Mafioso folklore.
In this riveting work of reportage, award-winning journalist Bowden (Black Hawk Down, 1999) details American involvement in the assassination of Pablo Escobar, the Colombian billionaire godfather of international cocaine trafficking.
Drawing on restricted documents, transcripts of Escobar’s bugged phone conversations, and interviews with soldiers and government officials involved in the mission, Bowden composes a fast-paced chronicle of the notorious Narco’s rise and downfall. He sketches out Escobar’s early days in 1960s Medellín, showing how the young crime boss launched a career of car-theft and extortion before making his millions in the cocaine business. Starting in 1984, Escobar and his guerillas—who hoped to coerce the Colombian government to ban extradition of drug traffickers to the US—began assassinating judges, police officers, journalists, and politicians. But what made him an American military target was his 1989 bombing of an Avianca airliner, a botched attempt to murder a Colombian presidential candidate that killed over 100 people, including two Americans. Escobar surrendered to the Colombian government under the condition that he could live in La Catedral, his luxury “prison,” where, protected by his henchmen, he entertained visitors with private bars, soccer games, and teenaged prostitutes. When the Colombian government attempted to relocate Escobar to a real penitentiary, he escaped by bribing Colombian officials and remained on the run for over a year. Bowden shocks with the horrific progression of Escobar’s Medellín cartel in the first part of this account, offers insightful perspectives of frustrated military men who hunt the drug lord in the second, and renders some nice portraits of interesting characters throughout. He does his best to get the facts straight by citing both Colombians’ and Americans’ recollections of significant events. Yet, with so much political corruption on both sides of the fence, he allows the reader to make the final judgments.
Essential reading for any aficionado of espionage scandals and Mafioso folklore.Pub Date: May 8, 2001
ISBN: 0-87113-783-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2001
Well-told and admonitory.
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
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
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.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
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