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Start giftingBlow
This audiobook uses AI narration.
We’re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.
Learn moreBlow is the unlikely story of George Jung’s roller-coaster ride from middle-class high school football hero to the heart of Pablo Escobar’s Medellín cartel—the largest importer of the United States cocaine supply in the 1980s. Jung’s early business of flying marijuana into the United States from the mountains of Mexico took a dramatic turn when he met Carlos Lehder, a young Colombian car thief with connections to the then newly born cocaine operation in his native land. Together they created a new model for selling cocaine, turning a drug used primarily by the entertainment elite into a massive and unimaginably lucrative enterprise—one whose earnings, if legal, would have ranked the cocaine business as the sixth largest private enterprise in the Fortune 500.
The ride came to a screeching halt when DEA agents and Florida police busted Jung with three hundred kilos of coke, effectively unraveling his fortune. But George wasn’t about to go down alone. He planned to bring down with him one of the biggest cartel figures ever caught.
With a riveting insider account of the lurid world of international drug smuggling and a supercharged drama of one man’s meteoric rise and desperate fall, Bruce Porter chronicles Jung’s life using unprecedented eyewitness sources in this critically acclaimed true crime classic.
Bruce Porter is a former writer for Newsweek and a professor at the Columbia Journalism School. He has written for the Washington Post, New York Times Magazine, Playboy, and Rolling Stone, as well as dozens of other magazines and newspapers. Porter’s first book, Blow, was a bestselling New York Times Notable Book and was made into a major motion picture. He lives in New York City.
Stephen Bowlby, a lifelong performer and filmmaker, loves bringing ideas to life in ways that entertain, inviting both action and reflection. With a career in writing, directing, and film editing, he infuses his narration with a strong sense of story.
Reviews
“Extraordinarily interesting…Mr. Porter has done an excellent job telling the tale of a very unusual entrepreneur.”
“The story belongs to anyone who has ever savored a well-told tale of adventure, greed, deceit, and revenge. Best of all, it’s true.”
“With drama and detail…Porter reconstructs the fast, amoral life of George Jung…whose adventures with stacks of cash, kinky sex, and dangerous deals hold voyeuristic fascination.”
“A sleigh-ride-to-hell story of how ‘60s hippie innocence turned into ‘80s megadepravity…finely researched, told with pizzazz.”
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