- Hardcover: 320 pages
- Publisher: HarperCollins Canada / Non-Fiction (May 27 1993)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0060179309
- ISBN-13: 978-0060179304
- Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 12.2 x 3.6 cm
- Shipping Weight: 567 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #996,347 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Kirkus Reviews
The up-your-nose, in-your-face life of George Jung, the high-school football star from small-town USA who became the American linchpin of the Colombian cocaine connection. Relying on extensive interviews with Jung and other key figures, Porter (Journalism/Brooklyn College) recounts a sleigh- ride-to-hell story of how 60's hippie innocence turned into 80's megadepravity. Porter dwells too long on Jung's unexceptional childhood (poor grades, risk-taking, shaky family life) but picks up steam when his subject comes of age--as a likable, handsome, well-muscled hedonist--and takes off for California and a haze of sunbathing, sex, pot, and LSD. Soon enough, Jung becomes chief marijuana importer to a number of prestigious East Coast colleges. Likening himself to Butch Cassidy, he moves his operation to Mexico and makes a mint until a series of busts stops him--temporarily. In prison, Jung befriends a young Carlos Lehder and links up with the Medell¡n coke cartel. The money bandied about is staggering: The Colombian suppliers gross $35 billion a year, and Jung buys a house just to stash his cash (lining floors and walls with $100 bills): ``Money, Learjets, fast cars, wild women, houses with maids,'' is how he recalls it later. Inevitably, the roller-coaster hits the steep downward slope: paranoia, as Jung snorts mountains of coke; a heart attack in his mid-30s; a car-bomb attack by Lehder, by now a business enemy; scary trips to Colombia, during one of which Jung watched coke czar Pablo Escobar execute a police informer; a flurry of arrests and escapes; finally, the Big Bust. But, as always, Jung comes out unscathed, turning state's witness (with Escobar's approval) to sing against Lehder. Set scot-free in exchange for his testimony, Jung now works in a legit delivery service, transporting fish up and down Cape Cod. How a happy hippie blew it on blow--finely researched, told with pizzazz. (Illustrations) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Product Description
In the mid-1970s, George Jung, former high school football star and hippie, met Carlos Lehder, psychopath and admirer of John Lennon, Hitler and Che Guevara. They were both doing time for drug dealing. The two men began one of the most profitable partnerships in history by turning the smuggling of cocaine, then a scarce luxury commodity into an unimaginably lucrative mass industry. By teaming up with Pablo Escobar of the tightly-knit Columbian Medellin cartel, they supplied more than 80% of the cocaine to the US for the next 15 years and grossed nearly $35 billion a year. In this book, Bruce Porter shows how Jung, who was his principal source for the book, created a business that went from a modest suitcase stash to one that could have placed sixth on the Fortune 500 list. Through Jung, the reader becomes privy to the inner workings of the organization, witnessing high life and high jinks in the daily operations of the rich and powerful Medellin drug cartel.
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First Sentence
IN 1622 A SPLINTER GROUP OF PILGRIMS from the Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts journeyed up the coast to Weymouth to try to set up a trading post, and if they'd only heard about the herring they might not have made such a mess of it. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
IN 1622 A SPLINTER GROUP OF PILGRIMS from the Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts journeyed up the coast to Weymouth to try to set up a trading post, and if they'd only heard about the herring they might not have made such a mess of it. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent read.,
By
This review is from: BLOW: How a Small-Town Boy Made $100 Million with the Medellin Cocaine Cartel And Lost It All (Paperback)
At least as good as, if not better than, the movie. Very well worth the read.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Jailing Jung (Blow) and Killing Pablo,
By A Customer
This review is from: BLOW: How a Small-Town Boy Made $100 Million with the Medellin Cocaine Cartel And Lost It All (Paperback)
Those interested in learning about the disparate personalities largely responsible for the cocaine avalanche that washed over America need only read this excellent book and Mark Bowden's equally fascinating work of non-fiction titled "Killing Pablo."In "Blow", we laugh at the ordeals of George Jung and company as they grow rich exploiting America's burgeoning drug market while being chased, indicted, and jailed by inept and unsophisticated law enforcement agencies and prosecutors. In "Killing Pablo", we shudder over the actions of the world's (formerly) most ruthless drug lord who held Colombia hostage through rewards and ruthless punishment aptly termed "plata o plomo" (silver or lead). Porter and Bowden performed exhaustive research on their respective protagonists and produced rousing narratives. Two of the finest works of non-fiction - of any topic - I've ever read.
4.0 out of 5 stars
A real page turner,
By Timothy G. Roberts (Austin, TX) - See all my reviews
This review is from: BLOW: How a Small-Town Boy Made $100 Million with the Medellin Cocaine Cartel And Lost It All (Paperback)
George Jung is widely acknowedged as the man who introduced cocaine for mass consumption to people in the United States, and this book tells us how he did it. Sort of a lesson in how to smuggle.From his begginings as a high school football player, through his early days selling marijuana in Florida, right through to his career as the number one cocaine supplier in the US and ending up with him languishing in prison, every aspect of his life is covered here in all it's glory. With a life as rich in detail as Jung's, the book could easily have become bogged down in detail, but it's to the writers credit that he never lets the pace flag. Highly reccommended.
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