Download Jon Roberts, Evan Wright – 2011 – American Desperado (True Crime) torrent

By: Jon Roberts, Evan Wright
Narrated by: Mark Bramhall, Erik Davies, Mark Deakins, Kimberly Farr, Kirby Heyborne, Thomas Vincent Kelly, Steve Kramer, Meredith Scott Lynn, Johnathan McClain, Christina Rooney
Length: 16 hours and 40 minutes
Uncut audiobook
Release Date: 11-01-11
Categories: Biographies & Memoirs, True Crime, Organized Crime
Language: English
Publisher: Random House Audio
Format: mp3 64/48 stereo

In 2008, veteran journalist Evan Wright, acclaimed for his New York Times bestseller Generation Kill and co-writer of the Emmy-winning HBO series that spawned it, began a series of interviews with supervillain Jon Roberts, star of the smash-hit documentary Cocaine Cowboys. The conversations would span three years, during which Wright came to realize that Roberts was much more than the de facto “transportation chief” for the Medellin cartel in the 1980s, much more than a facilitator of a national drug epidemic. As Wright’s tape recorder hummed and Roberts reeled off hundreds of baffling stories, it became clear that perhaps no one in history had broken so many laws with such willful abandon.

Roberts, in fact, appeared to be a criminal prodigy, albeit one with remarkable self-awareness and a fervent desire to protect his son from following the same path.

American Desperado is Roberts’ candid account of his birth into Mafia royalty, his first kill at age seven, his career as a hunter-assassin in Vietnam, his return to New York to become one of the city’s leading nightclub impresarios at age 22, and his journey to Miami, where within a few years he had become the Medellin Cartel’s most effective smuggler.

But that’s only half the story.

Roberts’ list of friends and acquaintances is reminiscent of a Who’s Who of the second half of the 20th century, and includes everyone from Jimi Hendrix, Richard Pryor and OJ Simpson to Carlo Gambino, Meyer Lansky and Manuel Noriega.

Nothing if not colorful, Roberts surrounded himself with beautiful women, drove his souped-up streetcar at a top speed of 180 miles per hour, slept with a 200-pound cougar, and hired a 6”6” professional wrestler named “The Thing” as his bodyguard. Eventually, Roberts became so powerful that he caught the attention of Republican Party leaders, was seduced by them, and was even co-opted by the CIA, carrying out their secret agenda.

Meticulously documented and relentlessly propulsive, this partnership between a bloodthirsty journalist and one of the most daring criminals ever written is like no other crime book you’ll ever read. Jon Roberts may be the only criminal who changed the course of American history.

©2011 Evan Wright (P)2011 Random House Audio

Critics’ reviews

“The Moby Dick of mob memoirs… here’s everything you ever wanted to know—and better yet, here’s how it all felt. Evan Wright will take you so deep into a career in organized crime that you’ll expect a knock on your door and a call from your lawyer halfway through.” (David Lipsky, author of the national bestseller Absolutely American)

“Delivers all the guilty pleasures you’d expect from a gangster memoir, but Wright’s superb prose offers something more: a meditation on good and evil amid the glittering decline of late 20th-century civilization…One of the year’s best books.” (James L. Swanson, Edgar Award-winning author of the New York Times bestsellers Manhunt and Bloody Crimes)

“American Desperado is not only stranger, but so much better than fiction… Gripping, addictive and mind-boggling, this unique book earns its place on the top shelf of true crime accounts.” (Chuck Hogan, New York Times bestselling author of Prince of Thieves, the basis for the Academy Award-nominated The Town)