Kings of Cocaine

Prize-winning Miami Herald reporters Guy Gugliotta and Jeff Leen tell the complete and revealing story of the powerful Colombian narcotics organization that grew to control eighty percent of the world’s cocaine market.

The cocaine trade is capitalism on overdrive—supply meeting demand on exponential levels. From small-time suitcase smuggling to levels of unimaginable sophistication and daring, Pablo Escobar Gaviria, Jorge Luis Ochoa Vasquez, Carlos Lehder Rivas, and Jose Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha came to be known as the most successful cocaine dealers in the world.

Kings of Cocaine is the story of the four men who grew from a rag tag group of hippies and sociopaths into regal kings as they manipulated world leaders, corrupted revolutionary movements, and protected themselves with the worst kind of violence as they built the modern cocaine business.

Guy Gugliotta covered Congress during a sixteen-year career as a national reporter for The Washington Post and for the last six years has been a freelance writer. He has written for The New York Times, National Geographic, Wired, Discover, and Smithsonian. He is the coauthor of Kings of Cocaine.