A tour de force of investigative journalism-this is the story of the violent rise and fall of Pablo Escobar, the head of the Colombian Medellin cocaine cartel. Escobar's criminal empire held a nation of thirty million hostage in a reign of terror that would only end with his death. In an intense, up-close account, award-winning journalist Mark Bowden exposes details never before revealed about the U.S.-led covert sixteen-month manhunt. With unprecedented access to important players—including Colombian president Cisar Gaviria and the incorruptible head of the special police unit that pursued Escobar, Colonel Hugo Martinez-as well as top-secret documents and transcripts of Escobar's intercepted phone conversations, Bowden has produced a gripping narrative that is a stark portrayal of rough justice in the real world.
Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the World's Greatest Outlaw
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Readers of Black Hawk Down know Mark Bowden can tell an exciting story about as well as any writer at work today. Killing Pablo is further proof. It describes the rise and fall of Pablo Escobar, a notorious Colombian drug lord who became one of the narcotic trade's first billionaires. Pablo--Bowden refers to him by his first name throughout the book--started out as a petty thief and wound up running a massive smuggling empire. At his height in the 1980s, he owned fleets of boats and planes, plus 19 separate residences in Medellin, each with its own helipad. Violence marked everything he did: "He wasn't an entrepreneur, and he wasn't even an especially talented businessman. He was just ruthless." He bought off police, politicians, and judges throughout his country, and killed many others who wouldn't cooperate. The Colombian government tried to capture him, but without much luck; he evaded them time after time. "Now and then the police achieved enough surprise to catch him, literally, with his pants down. In [1988], about one thousand national police raided one of his mansions," writes Bowden. "Pablo fled in his underwear, avoiding the police cordon on foot." He got away, again, but his days were numbered. He was making powerful enemies in both Colombia and the United States. The final straw probably came when Pablo's men murdered a popular politician and, three months later, planted a bomb on a plane, killing 110 people, including two Americans.
The bulk of Killing Pablo describes what happened when the U.S. government put its resources behind the hunt for Pablo. Bowden describes the search in gripping detail, from the massive electronic-surveillance effort to bureaucratic infighting between rival U.S. agencies. This is an outstanding work of reportorial journalism, too: in the epilogue, Bowden drops tantalizing hints that it was an American--not a Colombian--who delivered the killing shot to Pablo in 1993. Readers looking for a real-life thriller--or any kind of thriller, for that matter--won't do much better than Killing Pablo. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
The author of the bestseller Black Hawk Down, which depicted the U.S. military's involvement in Somalia, Bowden hits another home run with his chronicle of the manhunt for Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar. He traces the prevalence of violence in Colombian history as background, then launches into the tale of the dramatic rise and fall of "Don Pablo," as he was known. Packed with detail, the book shows how Escobar, a pudgy, uneducated man who smoked marijuana daily, ruthlessly built the infamous Medellin cartel, a drug machine that eventually controlled much of Colombian life. As Bowden shows, the impotence of the Colombian government left a void readily filled by Escobar's mafia. While not ignoring the larger picture e.g., the terrible drug-related murders that wracked the South American country in the late 1980s and early 1990s Bowden never loses sight of the human story behind the search for Escobar, who was finally assassinated in 1993, and the terrible toll the hunt took on many of its main players.. There's a smoking gun here: Bowden charges that U.S. special forces were likely involved in helping some of Colombia's other drug lords assassinate perhaps more than a hundred people linked to Escobar. There's no doubt, according to Bowden, that the U.S. government was involved in the search for Escobar after a 1989 airplane bombing that killed 100 and made him, in Bowden's words, "Public Enemy Number One in the world." This revelation highlights one of Bowden's many journalistic accomplishments here: he shows how the search for Escobar became an end in itself. (May 8)Forecast: Bowden will go on a monster tour (about two dozen cities) to promote this BOMC selection, which also has its own Web site (www.killingpablo.com). Expect healthy sales.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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There was no more exciting place in South America to be in April 1948 than Bogota, Colombia. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
There was no more exciting place in South America to be in April 1948 than Bogota, Colombia. Read the first page
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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
By D. Friedman
Format:Paperback
This book, inadvertently, I suspect, is really an argument against the drug war. By now a cliche, this line of thought postulates that, were drugs like cocaine not criminalized in the states, there would be no or little incentive for murderous thugs in Latin America to risk murder and lengthy prison times getting the drug in this country.
Thus, one could argue, quite blithely, that, had the American government wised up and attempted to regulate drug trafficking like any other international business, many of the unsavory elements of the business would depart for greener (more illicit) pastures. The natural consequence of this, of course, would be that millions of dollars otherwise spent on futile attempts at interdiction and eradication would be spent elsewhere, and many of the thousands of people killed both in the United States and Latin America over the past 25 years would instead be alive.
Would that it were true that the United States could hew to the lessons learned in the alcohol trade: once alcohol was legal again in the United States and it became a regulated drug sold only to people legally eligible to buy it, the violence associated with it declined precipitously. In fact, the only violence associated with alcohol use today is domestic violence and drunk driving. Those violent acts, while of course tragic to all those involved in them, are far fewer and far less bloody than the gang wars initiated by Al Capone and his antogonists.
That the same lesson applies in the drug war is sad.
On another note, a number of reviewers on this site have mentioned many apparent parallels between the hunt for Pablo Escobar and the hunt for Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. While it is true that, superficially, there are parallels, such as the US government deciding that its national security in all three instances was at risk with these monsters operating openly, it is nonetheless an unfair comparison. Relatively few Colombians liked Escobar, and he never had the legitimacy of the state behind him, as did Hussein.
Given all that, this is an excellent account of the travails leading up to, and concluding with, the execution of Escobar.
By Wayne Kelley
Format:Paperback
Killing Pablo is a good read, however far from what I would call an exciting read. It is very informative and is an excellent book if one wishes to have a better understanding of the actual politics behind the US war on Columbia's Narco's and seeks to understand why in the eighties and early nineties Columbia was being called a "Narco State" by particularly the United States government who more or less spearheaded the war against the Columbian drug Cartels. I am about to start reading Pablo Escobar's brothers book (The Accountants Story by Roberta Escobar) and am hoping this book will provide more insight into the actual life of Pablo Escobar, which is what I was looking for in this book, however did not find.
Format:Hardcover
The Amazon.com description tells enough of what the book is about, so I will not waste time with that. The author's previous book, Black Hawk Down, was enough to convince me that he is a very talented and intelligent writer, and he has done it again with Killing Pablo. This book is informative, the pacing is excellent, and his storytelling is honed. Simply excellent. I hope the author keeps writing.
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4.3 out of 5 stars
Most recent customer reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
very good read
This is a very good read told at a brisk pace. I came away feeling that Pablo was a bit of a tragic figure, with plenty of bad as well as plenty of good in him, mixed in with a... Read more
Published on Dec 2 2007 by Paul J. Fitzgerald
4.0 out of 5 stars
Reading Pablo
I picked up this book because I really liked Black Hak Down. This book is written in the same style that made BHD a great book. Read more
Published on July 15 2004 by Everett Littles
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great Read
This book was a great read. I had always been interested in the story about Pablo's rise and fall, and this book was very well written, and informative.
Published on May 19 2004 by Kurt R. Terry
5.0 out of 5 stars
I Couldn't Put it Down
Bowden gives a very gripping glimpse inside the world of the late Colombian drug lord, Pablo Escobar. Read more
Published on Mar 12 2004 by Jacob Hantla
5.0 out of 5 stars
First Rate Crime Drama
In reading KILLING PABLO, I was struck by the likeness of Pablo Escobar to later terrrorists such as UBL and Saddam. Read more
Published on Feb 27 2004 by Timothy Ritter
5.0 out of 5 stars
BEST BOOK EVER
This book was the most interesting book I have ever read. It's about the most notorious cartel leader in history, Pablo Escobar. Read more
Published on Dec 17 2003 by Patrick
5.0 out of 5 stars
The War on Drugs
If you ever wondered how the US spent billions of dollars on the "War on Drugs", this book makes great reading. Read more
Published on Nov 20 2003 by Neal Mar
5.0 out of 5 stars
If you are considering this book, buy it. It's terrific!
I really enjoyed Black Hawk Down, and I am interested in Colombia. So this book was an easy pick. However, I was concerned that maybe the author might be a "one hit... Read more
Published on Oct 16 2003
4.0 out of 5 stars
Second to Black Hawk Down
Killing Pablo is a book that should have been made into a movie. It had every aspect of a good movie needed to succeed. Read more
Published on Aug 28 2003 by Crayon
5.0 out of 5 stars
Colombia's Drug War Heats Up
Killing Pablo, Mark Bowden's can't-put-it-down account of the rise and fall of Pablo Escobar, chronicles not only one of history's most famous manhunts, but also exposes the... Read more
Published on July 9 2003 by Alex Diaz-Granados
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