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BLOW: How a Small-Town Boy Made $100 Million with the Medellín Cocaine Cartel and Lost It All
BLOW is the unlikely story of George Jung's roller coaster ride from middle-class high school football hero to the heart of Pable Escobar's Medellin 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 super-charged 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.
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 super-charged 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.
352 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1993
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 105 reviews
June 1, 2011
Who hasn't seen the blockbuster movie of a true story of George Jung, the man who, if you snorted blow in the late 1970's to early 1980's, there was an 85% chance it came from him and his partner? But how many of the fans know Jung's real story. While the movie is sexier and more Hollywood for viewers, the book delivers an unflinching true account of Jung's wild life. And while the movie makes him look like a good person with the occasional lapse in judgement- sometimes moral, sometimes strategical- Bruce Porter's version of events which inspired the book is much more real and, in my opinion, wildly entertaining. And, yes, there are some MAJOR differences in the stories. In real life, one of the funniest variations of the facts was Derek Foreal. I know the real guy must be extremely irate about how he was depicted in the movie and I still can't really figure out how he came out this way in the script. In reality he was a hard core marine with an extensive knowledge of combat and military tactics but was depicted as a flamboyant homosexual drug lord. While he did inherit a chain of male hair salons, he was anything but feminine in nature. Few things like this were changed around throughout the silverscreen telling of the story but that was the biggest slip I can remember. In general, the book is more entertaining, albeit much longer but you learn that George Jung, while a clever businessman and most times a decent friend and family man, most times, wasn't all that good of a person. But the reader can't help but fly through the so-called "sleigh ride to hell" glued to the book. Loved it.
October 4, 2020
Took me a year to read this, hence the two stars. There was always something better to pick up ...
The movie is sexier, and very romanticized, of course - it's Hollywood. The movie was based on this book, which shows in detail the far less glamorous reality of the life of cocaine smuggler George Jung.
The movie is sexier, and very romanticized, of course - it's Hollywood. The movie was based on this book, which shows in detail the far less glamorous reality of the life of cocaine smuggler George Jung.
March 3, 2022
This is the story of George Jung, a United States citizen who became involved in the drug cartel of Pablo Escobar. He got his start with marijuana before linking up with others in the cocaine business. I have seen this movie a thousand times, but I somehow never realized this was a true story or that there was a book that it was based on. I was so excited to find this one included in the Audible Plus catalogue. This book appeared to be well researched. It was engaging and provided more detail than the film did. I really liked this book a lot.
September 14, 2018
Went into more detail than the movie - rhe stories and adventures they get up to are more extreme. Good read!
July 28, 2010
Some books give you a glimpse of a world that is happening right around you but you’re not really aware of. This book, as the name suggests, is a factual account of George------, a dope smuggler. George started with weed, flying it up from Mexico in the 60’s and eventually became an integral part of the Columbian Medein cartels’ transit infrastructure. Illuminating in its’ detail and fascinating in it’s larger than life main character I enjoyed the read. I especially liked the way the author set the world and national stage whenever circumstances changed for George. George made over 100million dollars starting with zero and ending with the same, .gardening in prison at the end. He was colorful, dynamic, full of flair and unable to know when to stop. We meet all the characters in his life including Pablo Escobar himself. This was an interesting book if you desire to step for a minute or two into another world existing simultaneously around us.
January 17, 2011
This is a really fascinating story, and proves the old cliche that the truth is often stranger (and I would add, more interesting) than fiction.
I picked this up on a whim having had it on my shelf for years. I got it for free after a reissue, I guess. I'd already seen the movie, but it's definitely more involved and better than the movie. Still makes me want to see the movie again just for comparison.
It's flabbergasting what drug smugglers were able to get away with in the '60s and '70s before the real crackdown began. And even though I know George Jung affected countless lives, many probably in negative ways, his character is still sympathetic and likeable.
Most amazing was his inability to get out of the business, no matter how it endangered him. That lure of money and drugs was too much, and in Porter's account, Jung keeps going as the reader increasingly urges him to get out before it's too late.
I picked this up on a whim having had it on my shelf for years. I got it for free after a reissue, I guess. I'd already seen the movie, but it's definitely more involved and better than the movie. Still makes me want to see the movie again just for comparison.
It's flabbergasting what drug smugglers were able to get away with in the '60s and '70s before the real crackdown began. And even though I know George Jung affected countless lives, many probably in negative ways, his character is still sympathetic and likeable.
Most amazing was his inability to get out of the business, no matter how it endangered him. That lure of money and drugs was too much, and in Porter's account, Jung keeps going as the reader increasingly urges him to get out before it's too late.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 31, 2015
straight forward book about a man too lucky for his own good.Ignore the overrated "film".The book is a superior experiance.
March 24, 2022
The movie is great but this book reveals a whole lot more of what actually happened in Boston Georges life.
June 10, 2021
George Jung is the only Americano to ever reach legend status in the world of la cocaina. This "as told to" biography is highly suspect in the details of his life, and makes the movie BLOW look like a fairy-tale.
November 5, 2020
This books was great. It was a little slow in the beginning for me but very good and well written. I would recommend this book though, definitely worth reading.
December 17, 2022
According to all that's interesting. com, George Jung was responsible for about 80% of the cocaine flown into the United States in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
I became interested in reading the book after I watched the 2001 movie Blow on Netflix.
The author writes well, not like some other crime-writing authors , and the book kept me interested.
In the early 1980s is when I started hearing about people "doing Coke." But according to the prologue which reported on 1974,
"where cocaine was concerned, the 1975 report to the president from the U. S. Domestic council's drug abuse task force rated the substance 'low' for the 'size of the core problem.' it said further that 'as it is currently used' [cocaine and] does not result in serious social consequences such as crime, hospital emergency room admissions, or death.' the demand for the drug, dormant since its previous heyday back at the turn of the century and in the roaring twenties, emanated from a thin, rarified slice of the population - rock and roll stars, the pop art crowd, Hollywood luminaries, members of cafe society on Manhattan's upper East Side."
George Jung was amazingly bold and seemed to have little fear of laws bringing him down.
I can't imagine how he managed to do as much cocaine as he did. A normal day for him was snorting 5 g of cocaine. from my experience as a young idiot, one g of cocaine could serve 4 people for 1 night. And if it was a special occasion, George Jung could do as much as 10 g in one day!
Jung was born in Boston in 1942. He was good at sports in high school, but sucked at academics. He liked marijuana, and he moved to Manhattan Beach, California, to be closer to that drug scene. Smoke the little, dealt a little to his friend's, but when a friend of his from U of Amherst visited him in Manhattan Beach, he told him that The weed he was buying for $60 a kilo cost him $300 back East. This is where George got the idea to go into the transportation business of drugs; Buy the weed here in California coming and fly it to the campus of Amherst.
He started making serious money at this, and realized that if he cut the middle man and bought weed directly from Mexico, he could make so much more.
I first learned about Puerto Vallarta, where George John first made his weed connection, in 1975, when I traveled with some friends who were meeting up with an old classmate of theirs from Penn state, in Guadalajara, where we would vacation for Samana santa in Puerto Vallarta. I absolutely fell in love with the place, and i returned many times, by myself. I remember we went on this boat trip, that toured to the island of mismaloya, and when we went by the river, the tour guide said for us to look to the side where he pointed out the houses of Charles Bronson, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. we learned that Mismaloya was where they filmed the movie "the night of the iguana." This was already past the heyday of it though. And those movies stars never went to Puerto Vallarta at that time anymore.
He traveled with a group of friends to Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, and spent 3 weeks there asking locals where they could find weed. They were unsuccessful until their last day when an American young woman led them to the son of a Mexican general, and George found he could buy weed from him for $20 a kilo.
George did the 1st flight himself, in a small airplane, despite having very little flying experience. He ended up getting lost, and in the book, I was sure he was going to Crash or get busted, because the sun was getting ready to go down and he was doing this completely by sight. He flew from puerto vallarta to a dry lake bed near Palm Springs California. After he was so frightened by this experience he vowed to hire professional pilots.
After getting the kilos to California, George and his friends would rent motor homes to drive across the country to Massachusetts. Driving 3 days straight to the East Coast was hairy, but Jung estimates he made between $50,000 and a $100,000 a month to split between he and his friends.
This is when he first got busted: in 1974, he was arrested in Chicago with 660 pounds of marijuana, when the man he was supposed to meet got busted with some heroin, and sold George out.
When I worked in a Mexican bar In the eighties, I would see various people suddenly disappear, and find out that they had gotten busted. I would later figure out who gave their name to the Cops, by finding out that perhaps their son had gotten arrested on drug charges.
But as we all know, prison only serves for people to make connections to continue their business on the outside. In a little prison cell in a correctional facility in Danbury, Connecticut, George met Carlos Lehder, a Colombian who had gotten busted for grand theft auto. He would later hook George up with Pablo Escobar. He was looking for a way to smuggle cocaine from the cartels in Columbia to the United States. Carlos told George that cocaine sold for $4000 to $5000 a pound in Colombia, and sold for $60,000 a pound in the United States. This seemed like a marriage made in heaven. George had the experience of flying drugs already, so he was in.
Both had light sentences, and when Carlos Lehder was released shortly after George was in 1975, he contacted him at his parents' house in Boston. He told George to get two women And send them on a trip to Antigua with two Samsonite suitcases each. There, cocaine from Colombia would be packed in their suitcases.
These young women were fairly naive about drugs, and at that time people were barely starting to hear about cocaine; it was something only the rich and famous did.
The two young women were successful, and when they returned to Boston, George sent them right back again for another trip.
They were making millions of dollars in a matter of days, and this was the beginning of the Medellin cartel.
In the days when George really got rolling with his cocaine transporting business, laws were amazingly lax in regard to finding out if people were using false IDs, and people using those false IDs to go in-and-out of countries. George would have meetings once a week with Carlos Lehder, and he thought it was safer if he would go outside of the country (Canada) for these meetings. His thinking was that if he got busted, they could not use That Meeting to arrest him on a conspiracy charge. But he was wrong, because if you used those meetings to break laws in the United States they could arrest you for things discussed in that meeting.
"for his phony ID, George relied on the fact that local bureaus of vital statistics, the agencies that issue birth certificates, never in his experience bothered to note down alongside the name of someone who was born whether that person had also died. To get a birth certificate, he simply filled out a form in the name of someone on the obit pages of the local paper, paid $5 - no identification required - and walked out with the document within 15 minutes. from that, he could get everything else he needed - a voter registration card, a library card. He'd apply for a social security card, telling the lady he'd been working outside the country all these years and never had one. When he applied for a driver's license, he'd say he'd lived in London Since he was a little boy and had always used public transportation."
for anybody who has tried to get a copy of their birth certificate lately, you know that you have to go to a notary public and get it notarized that you are applying for it, to make sure that you are who you say you are. But in the old days, I applied a couple different times for a copy of my birth certificate, and it was actually very easy to get, and very cheap.
All this time George had still been on parole from his incarceration in Danbury Connecticut.
By 1987 George had earned 100 million dollars, and he paid little taxes on it because he deposited in an offshore account in Panama.
"With his money safe, at least temporarily, George threw himself back into the plane trips and the preparations for Barry Kane's [a pilot he hired] first run. So preoccupied was he in these matters that when a letter arrived from Jo-anne Carr, forwarded to him by his mother, it came as a small shock for him to realize that he was still, despite it all, on parole. In recent months, his obligation to report on his activities had been reduced to sending in a monthly form attesting to the fact that he still resided at Abigail Adams Circle and was still employed in the fishing business, earning an income George put down as $300 a week. No foreign travel, no associating with people who had criminal backgrounds, no taking drugs. In her letter, Jo-anne praised him for his successful effort at staying out of trouble and his commendable progress toward rehabilitating himself, in consideration of which she had therefore recommended releasing him from his parole obligations ahead of schedule. All the best, she said, for a happy and prosperous future."
Just amazing! I bet a lot of people at that time were cursing George jung for fucking things up for them and making situations like parole so much tighter.
He lived in a mansion with his wife and daughter, but he was later busted When the DEA was surveillang hi. m, and he had enough cocaine in his house to be arrested. He got his sentence reduced by testifying against Carlos Lehder, and as soon as he was out of jail again, he just couldn't work a regular job, and he set up another deal. He got busted again though, because the guy he sold to was a DEA agent.
I became interested in reading the book after I watched the 2001 movie Blow on Netflix.
The author writes well, not like some other crime-writing authors , and the book kept me interested.
In the early 1980s is when I started hearing about people "doing Coke." But according to the prologue which reported on 1974,
"where cocaine was concerned, the 1975 report to the president from the U. S. Domestic council's drug abuse task force rated the substance 'low' for the 'size of the core problem.' it said further that 'as it is currently used' [cocaine and] does not result in serious social consequences such as crime, hospital emergency room admissions, or death.' the demand for the drug, dormant since its previous heyday back at the turn of the century and in the roaring twenties, emanated from a thin, rarified slice of the population - rock and roll stars, the pop art crowd, Hollywood luminaries, members of cafe society on Manhattan's upper East Side."
George Jung was amazingly bold and seemed to have little fear of laws bringing him down.
I can't imagine how he managed to do as much cocaine as he did. A normal day for him was snorting 5 g of cocaine. from my experience as a young idiot, one g of cocaine could serve 4 people for 1 night. And if it was a special occasion, George Jung could do as much as 10 g in one day!
Jung was born in Boston in 1942. He was good at sports in high school, but sucked at academics. He liked marijuana, and he moved to Manhattan Beach, California, to be closer to that drug scene. Smoke the little, dealt a little to his friend's, but when a friend of his from U of Amherst visited him in Manhattan Beach, he told him that The weed he was buying for $60 a kilo cost him $300 back East. This is where George got the idea to go into the transportation business of drugs; Buy the weed here in California coming and fly it to the campus of Amherst.
He started making serious money at this, and realized that if he cut the middle man and bought weed directly from Mexico, he could make so much more.
I first learned about Puerto Vallarta, where George John first made his weed connection, in 1975, when I traveled with some friends who were meeting up with an old classmate of theirs from Penn state, in Guadalajara, where we would vacation for Samana santa in Puerto Vallarta. I absolutely fell in love with the place, and i returned many times, by myself. I remember we went on this boat trip, that toured to the island of mismaloya, and when we went by the river, the tour guide said for us to look to the side where he pointed out the houses of Charles Bronson, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. we learned that Mismaloya was where they filmed the movie "the night of the iguana." This was already past the heyday of it though. And those movies stars never went to Puerto Vallarta at that time anymore.
He traveled with a group of friends to Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, and spent 3 weeks there asking locals where they could find weed. They were unsuccessful until their last day when an American young woman led them to the son of a Mexican general, and George found he could buy weed from him for $20 a kilo.
George did the 1st flight himself, in a small airplane, despite having very little flying experience. He ended up getting lost, and in the book, I was sure he was going to Crash or get busted, because the sun was getting ready to go down and he was doing this completely by sight. He flew from puerto vallarta to a dry lake bed near Palm Springs California. After he was so frightened by this experience he vowed to hire professional pilots.
After getting the kilos to California, George and his friends would rent motor homes to drive across the country to Massachusetts. Driving 3 days straight to the East Coast was hairy, but Jung estimates he made between $50,000 and a $100,000 a month to split between he and his friends.
This is when he first got busted: in 1974, he was arrested in Chicago with 660 pounds of marijuana, when the man he was supposed to meet got busted with some heroin, and sold George out.
When I worked in a Mexican bar In the eighties, I would see various people suddenly disappear, and find out that they had gotten busted. I would later figure out who gave their name to the Cops, by finding out that perhaps their son had gotten arrested on drug charges.
But as we all know, prison only serves for people to make connections to continue their business on the outside. In a little prison cell in a correctional facility in Danbury, Connecticut, George met Carlos Lehder, a Colombian who had gotten busted for grand theft auto. He would later hook George up with Pablo Escobar. He was looking for a way to smuggle cocaine from the cartels in Columbia to the United States. Carlos told George that cocaine sold for $4000 to $5000 a pound in Colombia, and sold for $60,000 a pound in the United States. This seemed like a marriage made in heaven. George had the experience of flying drugs already, so he was in.
Both had light sentences, and when Carlos Lehder was released shortly after George was in 1975, he contacted him at his parents' house in Boston. He told George to get two women And send them on a trip to Antigua with two Samsonite suitcases each. There, cocaine from Colombia would be packed in their suitcases.
These young women were fairly naive about drugs, and at that time people were barely starting to hear about cocaine; it was something only the rich and famous did.
The two young women were successful, and when they returned to Boston, George sent them right back again for another trip.
They were making millions of dollars in a matter of days, and this was the beginning of the Medellin cartel.
In the days when George really got rolling with his cocaine transporting business, laws were amazingly lax in regard to finding out if people were using false IDs, and people using those false IDs to go in-and-out of countries. George would have meetings once a week with Carlos Lehder, and he thought it was safer if he would go outside of the country (Canada) for these meetings. His thinking was that if he got busted, they could not use That Meeting to arrest him on a conspiracy charge. But he was wrong, because if you used those meetings to break laws in the United States they could arrest you for things discussed in that meeting.
"for his phony ID, George relied on the fact that local bureaus of vital statistics, the agencies that issue birth certificates, never in his experience bothered to note down alongside the name of someone who was born whether that person had also died. To get a birth certificate, he simply filled out a form in the name of someone on the obit pages of the local paper, paid $5 - no identification required - and walked out with the document within 15 minutes. from that, he could get everything else he needed - a voter registration card, a library card. He'd apply for a social security card, telling the lady he'd been working outside the country all these years and never had one. When he applied for a driver's license, he'd say he'd lived in London Since he was a little boy and had always used public transportation."
for anybody who has tried to get a copy of their birth certificate lately, you know that you have to go to a notary public and get it notarized that you are applying for it, to make sure that you are who you say you are. But in the old days, I applied a couple different times for a copy of my birth certificate, and it was actually very easy to get, and very cheap.
All this time George had still been on parole from his incarceration in Danbury Connecticut.
By 1987 George had earned 100 million dollars, and he paid little taxes on it because he deposited in an offshore account in Panama.
"With his money safe, at least temporarily, George threw himself back into the plane trips and the preparations for Barry Kane's [a pilot he hired] first run. So preoccupied was he in these matters that when a letter arrived from Jo-anne Carr, forwarded to him by his mother, it came as a small shock for him to realize that he was still, despite it all, on parole. In recent months, his obligation to report on his activities had been reduced to sending in a monthly form attesting to the fact that he still resided at Abigail Adams Circle and was still employed in the fishing business, earning an income George put down as $300 a week. No foreign travel, no associating with people who had criminal backgrounds, no taking drugs. In her letter, Jo-anne praised him for his successful effort at staying out of trouble and his commendable progress toward rehabilitating himself, in consideration of which she had therefore recommended releasing him from his parole obligations ahead of schedule. All the best, she said, for a happy and prosperous future."
Just amazing! I bet a lot of people at that time were cursing George jung for fucking things up for them and making situations like parole so much tighter.
He lived in a mansion with his wife and daughter, but he was later busted When the DEA was surveillang hi. m, and he had enough cocaine in his house to be arrested. He got his sentence reduced by testifying against Carlos Lehder, and as soon as he was out of jail again, he just couldn't work a regular job, and he set up another deal. He got busted again though, because the guy he sold to was a DEA agent.
October 30, 2022
George Jung was a wild guy from Boston, but the movie makes him out to be a...hero? A sort of outlaw who never did anything except party. This book just separates him from the movie's fictive narrative and puts it in perspective. In the movie, the chicks in his life were the problem. In real life, Jung would break their noses, do just about anything to keep his way going. I was just really surprised how different this was from the movie, and I liked the guy in the movie which evidently was pure fiction. He spent a long time in Lewisburg state prison, where for like the third time he found new connections other than Pablo Escobar. It was unbelievable how stupid he started to act toward the end, basically inviting an FBI agent who was clocking him for his past drug activities to become a "pirate drug smuggler" with him. The director, Ted Demme, overdosed.
Read
May 9, 2016The movie was TERRIFIC!!!!
It had everything Drugs, Parties, Famous Dealers, Smuggling scams... The list goes on and on....
It was a nonstop action packed movie. I hoped the book would elaborate on the movie parts...
Sadly it was a Lil slow, don't get me wrong the mans life is UNBELIEVABLE!!!!!
But I kinda expected more..(spoiled from the movie I guess)
It was a good read none the less. The way the man lived his life PURE INSANITY!!!!
From the people he met and dealt with, to the woman he married, to the shenanigans that took place in between.. GOLD!!!!
It had everything Drugs, Parties, Famous Dealers, Smuggling scams... The list goes on and on....
It was a nonstop action packed movie. I hoped the book would elaborate on the movie parts...
Sadly it was a Lil slow, don't get me wrong the mans life is UNBELIEVABLE!!!!!
But I kinda expected more..(spoiled from the movie I guess)
It was a good read none the less. The way the man lived his life PURE INSANITY!!!!
From the people he met and dealt with, to the woman he married, to the shenanigans that took place in between.. GOLD!!!!
May 18, 2022
The film left me wanting more insight into George's life. My questions have been answered by reading Bruce Porter's book and all the players have turned into more rounded, relatable people. I enjoy the film for its own dramatic flair while appreciating the book for its depth, complexity and detail.
January 7, 2016
very aptly named, because this book blows
February 11, 2019
Wow. I started this book thinking it would be okay, but it was a page turner. Truly remarkable story. Don't deal drugs, kids.
August 20, 2021
Amazing. The guy had no conscience. What a life.
April 1, 2022
A cautionary tale. If I had ever considered drugs, I would change my mind after reading this book.
April 4, 2022
this Novel is about the destruction of a family because of drugs, both marajuana and cocaine. Sad, but true for many people.
July 15, 2022
Well narrated. The incredible story of a smuggler who wanted it all and never learnt his lesson.
December 8, 2022
Movie and book equally as good. Would recommend for any of the movie lovers out there.
February 9, 2024
4.5 🌟So many more details than the movie. Really well researched and written!
January 13, 2023
Great read
Definitely worth your time.
The book is even better than the movie, which I plan to see again on Amazon.
Definitely worth your time.
The book is even better than the movie, which I plan to see again on Amazon.
March 29, 2023
Wow, hard to believe this is a true story! I’m ready to go back and watch the movie again!
May 14, 2018
3.4. It is not the most amazing storytelling, but the tory is quite interesting.
I saw the movie so many years ago, I actually don't remember it so much. I do remember having the impression that he seemed like a pretty ok kind of guy (maybe not in the most moral of professions...) who seemed like he got screwed over a lot. And when I voiced my opinion I was quickly shut down by my sister who pointed out that the story was made to make you feel sympathetic.
I was a bit disappointed to find the same trend here. Though I will say he didn't leave out parts that were less flattering, he did seem to always present them in a way that made it sound like the author was a bit in awe with George. He was always looking great or talking suave or being daring and exciting. From the way he acted though, he seems like a straight up psychopath. He was impulsive, reckless, an addict, callous and thought he was a lot smarter than he was. And no doubt, those characteristics propelled him far, but are those really characteristics deserving hero worship?
Anyway, the story is true, for the most part, which gives it an interesting angle. It doesn't lack for excitement, but it does have a tendency to go off on some tangents that do no seem necessary or enriching to the story. If you like biographies then this may be of interest, but this is not the kind of story that will lift you up or inspire you. Also, if you have an intense moral issue or some other aversion to drugs and/or smuggling, the hero worship writing style here is probably going to be particularly hard to swallow.
I saw the movie so many years ago, I actually don't remember it so much. I do remember having the impression that he seemed like a pretty ok kind of guy (maybe not in the most moral of professions...) who seemed like he got screwed over a lot. And when I voiced my opinion I was quickly shut down by my sister who pointed out that the story was made to make you feel sympathetic.
I was a bit disappointed to find the same trend here. Though I will say he didn't leave out parts that were less flattering, he did seem to always present them in a way that made it sound like the author was a bit in awe with George. He was always looking great or talking suave or being daring and exciting. From the way he acted though, he seems like a straight up psychopath. He was impulsive, reckless, an addict, callous and thought he was a lot smarter than he was. And no doubt, those characteristics propelled him far, but are those really characteristics deserving hero worship?
Anyway, the story is true, for the most part, which gives it an interesting angle. It doesn't lack for excitement, but it does have a tendency to go off on some tangents that do no seem necessary or enriching to the story. If you like biographies then this may be of interest, but this is not the kind of story that will lift you up or inspire you. Also, if you have an intense moral issue or some other aversion to drugs and/or smuggling, the hero worship writing style here is probably going to be particularly hard to swallow.
August 31, 2020
This was an interesting read, if just taking far too long to ramp up. The minutia of George's involvement on his high school football team, for example, were of little use as the story progressed. Perhaps others find that interesting, but other than the brief setup of showing George being from a 'small-town' as per the title, I felt far too much time was invested on his early life.
I also question the reliability of the narrative. It's great that George was able to speak to his own experiences and provide color to the story, but simultaneously, his years of extensive cocaine abuse likely dimmed (if not altered entirely) his memories of events. Certainly other people were interviewed and news was sourced, but as a whole, I questioned how truthful the stories were.
Even as a half-fiction book, it does become much more intriguing as the story moves to the cocaine trade, the challenges and oddities of logistics, and the personalities and danger of the trade. It's an easy read, if a bit challenging at times to know if the narrator is speaking in 1st or 3rd person. There's some great crossover for anyone who has read (or absorbed other media) on the Medellin cartel.
Being predisposed to like crime-related books, it's unsurprising that I liked this book as a whole.
I also question the reliability of the narrative. It's great that George was able to speak to his own experiences and provide color to the story, but simultaneously, his years of extensive cocaine abuse likely dimmed (if not altered entirely) his memories of events. Certainly other people were interviewed and news was sourced, but as a whole, I questioned how truthful the stories were.
Even as a half-fiction book, it does become much more intriguing as the story moves to the cocaine trade, the challenges and oddities of logistics, and the personalities and danger of the trade. It's an easy read, if a bit challenging at times to know if the narrator is speaking in 1st or 3rd person. There's some great crossover for anyone who has read (or absorbed other media) on the Medellin cartel.
Being predisposed to like crime-related books, it's unsurprising that I liked this book as a whole.
March 11, 2025
I picked this one up after reading Killing Pablo by Mark Bowden and remembering the Johnny Depp movie. I found that the true story told in this book and the one told in the film are so distinctly different that it actually hurts my enjoyment of both. It will be hard to take the movie seriously now that I know the only thing it has in common with the truth is the book title (the movie even pronounces George's name as "Young" even though the book clearly says it is a hard J in Jung.) And it was hard to enjoy the book once I realized that all of the emotion in the movie was fabricated.
What you're left with is a fairly uninteresting story of a drug smuggler with a very predictable and unsurprising story. Even if I had not seen the movie I would know that George would make a fortune, screw it up, and get caught. But even the details involved were mundane and have become tropes in the years since the book was written.
What you're left with is a fairly uninteresting story of a drug smuggler with a very predictable and unsurprising story. Even if I had not seen the movie I would know that George would make a fortune, screw it up, and get caught. But even the details involved were mundane and have become tropes in the years since the book was written.
October 31, 2021
Story of George Jung, a middle class kid who starts flying marijuana into the US from Mexico. Busted and jailed meets Carlos Lehder in prison and they team up to start importing coke in the 80’s. Getting bigger they started buying directly from Pablo Escobar. Eventually Lehder cuts his partner out selling directly to Georges California contacts. George perseveres though directly competing w/ Lehder until the DEA and Fla police bust Jung with 300 kilos of coke. George turns states evidence against Lehder and other drug smugglers & dealers and gets into the witness protection program. Almost as an after thought the book barely mentions that he can’t take the little guy, regular job life and gets busted agin for smuggling pot. I think he’s in prison forever. OK book 3***
November 6, 2017
Four stars and not five because this book gives way too much space to detailing the quirks of Jung's personal life. Who cares? But the book earned every one of those four stars for the in depth analysis of how a mid-level pot bust led to a prison sentence that aligned two men who were to become the leading forces of smuggling cocaine into the U.S. throughout the 1980s. And the final chapters present compelling interviews with the undercover agents who took down Jung in a series of stings (took awhile to get him locked away for life).
If you've seen the movie, it's that but way more detailed (and way less glamorization of the life).
If you've seen the movie, it's that but way more detailed (and way less glamorization of the life).
August 22, 2018
4.5 rounded to 5 stars. This was a very interesting audio book that made my drive fly by. I found myself intrigued by the sure audacity of the smuggling and the amount of money involved in the drug trade. While the book had me pulling for the small-town boy, I couldn’t hep but think of the millions of people that were ruined by the drugs he and his “friends” smuggled into the U.S. The book now has me wanting to see the movie.
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