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
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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
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