Adventures Of A Hashish Smuggler

Download Adventures Of A Hashish Smuggler full books in PDF, epub, and Kindle. Read online Adventures Of A Hashish Smuggler ebook anywhere anytime directly on your device. Fast Download speed and no annoying ads. We cannot guarantee that every ebooks is available!

Adventures of a Hashish Smuggler

Author : Henri de Monfreid
Publisher : SCB Distributors
ISBN 13 : 1939149827
Total Pages : 316 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (391 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Adventures of a Hashish Smuggler by : Henri de Monfreid

Download or read book Adventures of a Hashish Smuggler written by Henri de Monfreid and published by SCB Distributors. This book was released on 2017-04-26 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nobleman, writer, adventurer and inspiration for the swashbuckling gun runner in the Adventures of Tintin, Henri de Monfreid lived by his own account “a rich, restless, magnificent life” as one of the great travelers of his or any age. The son of a French artist who knew Paul Gaugin as a child, de Monfreid sought his fortune by becoming a collector and merchant of the fabled Persian Gulf pearls. He was then drawn into the shadowy world of arms trading, slavery, smuggling and drugs. Infamous as well as famous, his name is inextricably linked to the Red Sea and the raffish ports between Suez and Aden in the early years of the twentieth century. De Monfreid (1879 to 1974) had a long life of many adventures around the Horn of Africa where he dodged pirates as well as the authorities. In Adventures of a Hashish Smuggler, de Monfreid, who was not particularly law-abiding by nature and was essentially a professional gunrunner, tells the story of his one foray into the world of hashish smuggling during the 1920s. The source of the hashish was Greece, where hemp was openly grown. The market was Egypt, where the British government had banned the popular drug. When de Monfreid got the notion of going to Greece to purchase hashish to smuggle into Egypt, he didn’t even know what hashish looked like. De Monfreid arranged to have 600 kilos of hashish brought from Greece to Marseilles and then into Djibouti, a French colony. From there, he sailed with it in his own “boutre” or dhow and a loyal crew of natives (assembled when he had run the pearl-diving operation) up the Red Sea to Suez, from where the shipment was carried on to Cairo by camel caravan. Along the way de Monfreid had several close calls and met a number of colorful characters. Shortly after de Monfreid’s venture, the Greek monarchy was turned out and the Second Hellenic Republic was declared. Under strong pressure and with economic inducements from Great Britain, the new Greek government outlawed the production of hashish.

Hashish

Author : Henry De Monfreid
Publisher : Penguin UK
ISBN 13 : 0141958219
Total Pages : 227 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (419 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Hashish by : Henry De Monfreid

Download or read book Hashish written by Henry De Monfreid and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2007-07-05 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nobleman, writer, adventurer and inspiration for the swashbuckling gun runner in the Adventures of Tintin, Henri de Monfried lived by his own account ‘a rich, restless, magnificent life’ as one of the great travellers of his or any age. Infamous as well as famous, his name is inextricably linked to the Red Sea and the raffish ports between Suez and Aden in the early years of the twentieth century. This is a compelling account of how de Monfried seeks his fortune by becoming a collector and merchant of the fabled Gulf pearls, then is drawn into the shadowy world of arms trading, slavery, smuggling and drugs. Hashish was the drug of choice, and de Monfried writes of sailing to Suez with illegal cargos, dodging blockades and pirates.

Pearls, Arms and Hashish

Author : Henri de Monfreid
Publisher : Pickle Partners Publishing
ISBN 13 : 178912123X
Total Pages : 482 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (891 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Pearls, Arms and Hashish by : Henri de Monfreid

Download or read book Pearls, Arms and Hashish written by Henri de Monfreid and published by Pickle Partners Publishing. This book was released on 2018-04-03 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1930, this is the personal adventure narrative of Henri de Monfreid—nobleman, writer, adventurer and inspiration for the swashbuckling gun runner in the Adventures of Tintin. “Henri de Monfried satisfies the most exacting reader. One is never for a moment suspicious that his amanuensis is crediting him with words he could not use or thoughts he would not entertain. The impression conveyed by Ida Treat's really superb rendering of the French searover's story is that M. de Monfried could write very well indeed if he thought it worthwhile, but that he expresses himself as a rule in other ways. “Briefly, Henri de Monfried is the son of a Bostonian artist of French descent who lived in the south of France and married a French peasant girl. The boy grew up and tried various callings, but finally yielded to a Wanderlust which took him to French Somaliland, at the southern end of the Red Sea. He became a Moslem and engaged in pearling, gunrunning, slaving, and the smuggling of hashish into Egypt. He has a family. He is fifty years old. The Arabs call him Abd el Hai. This book is what he calls the first half of his life. He is too interested in life itself to take consolation in memoirs as yet. The British navy calls him the Sea Wolf. He makes a hobby of raising the French flag on islands inconveniently near to British coaling stations. “There are [...] sketches of sea-boards and seamen in this book which recall the master's hand and mind. And there is never a word too much. A touch light as a feather; an ironical glance as his adversary departs defeated, or an equally ironical bow as the British Lion mauls him and lets him go—to try again.”—Saturday Review

Smuggler's Blues

Author : Richard Stratton
Publisher : Skyhorse
ISBN 13 : 1628726709
Total Pages : 323 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (287 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Smuggler's Blues by : Richard Stratton

Download or read book Smuggler's Blues written by Richard Stratton and published by Skyhorse. This book was released on 2016-04-05 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Goodfellas meets Savages meets Catch Me If You Can in this true tale of high-stakes smuggling from pot’s outlaw years. Richard Stratton was the unlikeliest of kingpins. A clean-cut Wellesley boy who entered outlaw culture on a trip to Mexico, he saw his search for a joint morph into a thrill-filled dope run smuggling two kilos across the border in his car door. He became a member of the Hippie Mafia, traveling the world to keep America high, living the underground life while embracing the hippie credo, rejecting hard drugs in favor of marijuana and hashish. With cameos by Whitey Bulger and Norman Mailer, Smuggler’s Blues tells Stratton’s adventure while centering on his last years as he travels from New York to Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley to source and smuggle high-grade hash in the midst of civil war, from the Caribbean to the backwoods of Maine, and from the Chelsea Hotel to the Plaza as his fortunes rise and fall. All the while he is being pursued by his nemesis, a philosophical DEA agent who respects him for his good business practices. A true-crime story that reads like fiction, Smuggler’s Blues is a psychedelic road trip through international drug smuggling, the hippie underground, and the war on weed. As Big Marijuana emerges, it brings to vivid life an important chapter in pot’s cultural history.

Jackpot

Author : Jason Ryan
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 0762767995
Total Pages : 333 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (627 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Jackpot by : Jason Ryan

Download or read book Jackpot written by Jason Ryan and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2012-08-07 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the late 1970s and early '80s, a cadre of freewheeling, Southern pot smugglers lived at the crossroads of Miami Vice and a Jimmy Buffett song. These irrepressible adventurers unloaded nearly a billion dollars worth of marijuana and hashish through the eastern seaboard’s marshes. Then came their undoing: Operation Jackpot, one of the largest drug investigations ever and an opening volley in Ronald Reagan’s War on Drugs. In Jackpot, author Jason Ryan takes us back to the heady days before drug smuggling was synonymous with deadly gunplay. During this golden age of marijuana trafficking, the country’s most prominent kingpins were a group of wayward and fun-loving Southern gentlemen who forsook college educations to sail drug-laden luxury sailboats across the Mediterranean, the Atlantic, and the Caribbean. Les Riley, Barry Foy, and their comrades eschewed violence as much as they loved pleasure, and it was greed, lust, and disaster at sea that ultimately caught up with them, along with the law. In a cat-and-mouse game played out in exotic locations across the globe, the smugglers sailed through hurricanes, broke out of jail and survived encounters with armed militants in Colombia, Grenada and Lebanon. Based on years of research and interviews with imprisoned and recently released smugglers and the law enforcement agents who tracked them down, Jackpot is sure to become a classic story from America's controversial Drug Wars. “The adventures, the long-gone economy, and the sting that ultimately brought them down and changed US drug policy are meticulously documented and lucidly spun…. Part New Yorker feature-part Jimmy Buffet song. . . . The result is adventuresome, lavish, informative fun.” —GQ “[A] rollicking story, Ryan manages to pack in one amusing tale after another.... Jackpot is a rip-roaring good read.” —Charleston City Paper “High times on the high seas: Investigative reporter Ryan recounts the glory days of dope smuggling and their terrible denouement.... A well-told tale of true crime that provides a few good arguments for why it should not be a crime at all.” —Kirkus Reviews “Reads like an international thriller. . . . chock-a-block with hilarious and hair-raising anecdotes of fast times.” —New York Journal of Books “[A] thoroughly researched account of Operation Jackpot, the drug investigation that ended the reign of South Carolina’s ‘gentlemen smugglers,’.... Ryan recreates the era with a vivid, sun-drenched intensity.” —Publishers Weekly

God Helped Us Smuggle Hash

Author : Pepper Sweet
Publisher : Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN 13 : 9781515310662
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (16 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis God Helped Us Smuggle Hash by : Pepper Sweet

Download or read book God Helped Us Smuggle Hash written by Pepper Sweet and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2015-09-24 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the late 1960s, teenage Justin Case finds himself trying to discover who he is in the midst of a tumultuous cultural revolution. Rejecting the elite environment in which he was raised, Justin drops out of college in his junior year and dives headlong into the counterculture. Justin joins up with his high school buddy Sky and Sky's girlfriend Daisy to fully adopt a hippie lifestyle. But when the war in Vietnam escalates and the United States military is drafting every eligible young man, Justin and Sky are faced with a difficult dilemma. Their decision is to cross the Atlantic where the three of them make a beach their new home in the enchanting country of Morocco. Out of the military's reach and longing to contribute to the emerging cultural revolution, the trio begin smuggling hashish into the United States. Soon it appears that some divine presence is helping them to succeed, protecting and supporting their illicit contribution to peace and love. But even as their smuggling seems blessed by a higher power, a love triangle begins to develop that could tear the three apart forever. A bizarre true story, God Helped Us Smuggle Hash returns readers to the spirit and politics that drove the hippie movement through the late sixties into the uncertain seventies.

Hole in My Life

Author : Jack Gantos
Publisher : Macmillan
ISBN 13 : 9780374430894
Total Pages : 212 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (38 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Hole in My Life by : Jack Gantos

Download or read book Hole in My Life written by Jack Gantos and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2002 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this Michael L. Printz Honor Book, the Newbery Honor-winning creator of the Joey Pigza books shares the true story of how he became a writer the hard way by learning a valuable lesson while he was in college.

Smoke Signals

Author : Martin A. Lee
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1439102619
Total Pages : 529 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (391 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Smoke Signals by : Martin A. Lee

Download or read book Smoke Signals written by Martin A. Lee and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-08-13 with total page 529 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book the author, an investigative journalist, traces the social history of marijuana from its origins to its emergence in the 1960s as a defining force in an ongoing culture war. He describes how the illicit marijuana subculture overcame government opposition and morphed into a multibillion-dollar industry. In 1996, Californians voted to legalize marijuana for medicinal purposes. Similar laws have followed in several other states, but not without antagonistic responses from federal, state, and local law enforcement. The author draws attention to underreported scientific breakthroughs that are reshaping the therapeutic landscape: medical researchers have developed promising treatments for cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer's, diabetes, chronic pain, and many other conditions that are beyond the reach of conventional cures. This book is an examination of the medical, recreational, scientific, and economic dimensions of the world's most controversial plant.

The King of Nepal

Author : Joseph R. Pietri
Publisher : Trine Day
ISBN 13 : 1937584496
Total Pages : 320 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (375 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The King of Nepal by : Joseph R. Pietri

Download or read book The King of Nepal written by Joseph R. Pietri and published by Trine Day. This book was released on 2010-03-01 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the halcyon days of easily accessible drugs to years of government intervention and a surging black market, this tale chronicles a former drug smuggler’s 50-year career in the drug trade, its evolution into a multibillion-dollar business, and the characters he met along the way. The journey begins with the infamous Hippie Hash trail that led from London and Amsterdam overland to Nepal where, prior to the early1970s, hashish was legal and smoked freely in Nepal, India, Afghanistan, and Laos; marijuana and opium were sold openly in Hindu temples in India and much of Asia; and cannabis was widely cultivated in Nepal and Afghanistan for use in food, medicine, and cloth. In documenting the stark contrasts of the ensuing years, the narrative examines the impact of the financial incentives awarded by international institutions such as the U.S. government to outlaw the cultivation of cannabis in Nepal and Afghanistan and to make hashish and opium illegal in Turkey—the demise of the U.S. “good old boy” dope network, the eruption of a violent criminal society, and the birth of a global black market for hard drugs—as well as the schemes smugglers employed to get around customs agents and various regulations.

The Bandit of Kabul

Author : Jerry Beisler
Publisher : Trine Day
ISBN 13 : 1936296810
Total Pages : 380 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (362 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The Bandit of Kabul by : Jerry Beisler

Download or read book The Bandit of Kabul written by Jerry Beisler and published by Trine Day. This book was released on 2012-06-01 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Filled with cutting-edge, global commentary on the last days of the legal Afghanistan-to-Amsterdam hash-smuggling route, this memoir tells of Jerry Beisler’s adventures around Asia and the United States. Complete with hedonism, high jinks, and humor, the fast-paced narrative also tells of serial killer Charles Sobaraj, the early days of reggae across the Caribbean, the genesis of the Emerald Triangle pot plantations, the Dalai Lama, and Jerry Garcia and other counterculture musicians from the late 1960s and 1970s. Now in its second edition, this firsthand account contains additional artwork, photographs, and stories.

Monkey House Blues

Author : Dominic Stevenson
Publisher : Random House
ISBN 13 : 1845968859
Total Pages : 213 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (459 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Monkey House Blues by : Dominic Stevenson

Download or read book Monkey House Blues written by Dominic Stevenson and published by Random House. This book was released on 2011-03-04 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1993, Dominic Stevenson left a comfortable life with his girlfriend in Kyoto, Japan, to travel to China. His journey took him to some of the most inhospitable and dangerous places in the world, from the poppy fields of the Afghan-Pakistan border to the ancient trade routes of the Silk Road, before he was arrested for drug smuggling while boarding a boat from Shanghai to Japan. After eight months on remand in a Chinese police lock-up, Stevenson was sentenced to two and a half years in one of the biggest prisons in the world, the Shanghai Municipal Prison aka 'The Monkey House'. There, he was imprisoned alongside just five westerners amongst five thousand Chinese criminals in a block for death row inmates and political prisoners, where the guards drank green tea and let the prison run itself. The experience led him to reflect on his previous life in Japan, India and Thailand, during which time he took on a varied array of jobs, including English teacher, karaoke-bar host, factory worker, busker, crystal seller and dope smuggler. From Afghan gun shops to Tibetan monasteries, Thai brothels and the stirrings of the rave culture in Goa, Monkey House Blues is a tale of discovery and rediscovery, of friendship and betrayal.

M'Hashish

Author : Mohammed Mrabet
Publisher : City Lights Publishers
ISBN 13 : 9780872860346
Total Pages : 56 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (63 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis M'Hashish by : Mohammed Mrabet

Download or read book M'Hashish written by Mohammed Mrabet and published by City Lights Publishers. This book was released on 1969-11-01 with total page 56 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Ah," said Hassan, "I don't believe in the world. There's another world where life is different." These are stories of that world. The word m'hashish (equivalent in Moghrebi of "behashished" or "full of hashish") is used only in a literal sense, but...

Shantaram

Author : Gregory David Roberts
Publisher : St. Martin's Press
ISBN 13 : 1429908270
Total Pages : 945 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (299 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Shantaram by : Gregory David Roberts

Download or read book Shantaram written by Gregory David Roberts and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2004-10-13 with total page 945 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on his own extraordinary life, Gregory David Roberts’ Shantaram is a mesmerizing novel about a man on the run who becomes entangled within the underworld of contemporary Bombay—the basis for the Apple + TV series starring Charlie Hunnam. “It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured.” An escaped convict with a false passport, Lin flees maximum security prison in Australia for the teeming streets of Bombay, where he can disappear. Accompanied by his guide and faithful friend, Prabaker, the two enter the city’s hidden society of beggars and gangsters, prostitutes and holy men, soldiers and actors, and Indians and exiles from other countries, who seek in this remarkable place what they cannot find elsewhere. As a hunted man without a home, family, or identity, Lin searches for love and meaning while running a clinic in one of the city’s poorest slums, and serving his apprenticeship in the dark arts of the Bombay mafia. The search leads him to war, prison torture, murder, and a series of enigmatic and bloody betrayals. The keys to unlock the mysteries and intrigues that bind Lin are held by two people. The first is Khader Khan: mafia godfather, criminal-philosopher-saint, and mentor to Lin in the underworld of the Golden City. The second is Karla: elusive, dangerous, and beautiful, whose passions are driven by secrets that torment her and yet give her a terrible power. Burning slums and five-star hotels, romantic love and prison agonies, criminal wars and Bollywood films, spiritual gurus and mujaheddin guerrillas—this huge novel has the world of human experience in its reach, and a passionate love for India at its heart.

Smuggler

Author : Richard Stratton
Publisher : Allen & Unwin
ISBN 13 : 1952534348
Total Pages : 322 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (525 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Smuggler by : Richard Stratton

Download or read book Smuggler written by Richard Stratton and published by Allen & Unwin. This book was released on 2016-06-22 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Richard Stratton was the unlikeliest of drug kingpins. He was a clean-cut college student who fell in love with the adrenaline high of cross-border drug trafficking after bringing two kilos of marijuana across the US border from a trip to Mexico. He never looked back. Stratton became a member of the hippie mafia, living the underground life while embracing the hippie credo, rejecting hard drugs in favour of marijuana and hashish, which he brought into the US by the ton. As an anti-establishment outlaw he was friends with Norman Mailer. As a major drug importer he worked with Whitey Bulger and some of the most notorious American crime figures. Smuggler gives the no-holds-barred account of Stratton's life as one of America's biggest traffickers. From Lebanon to the Caribbean, from improvised airstrips in the backwoods of New England to the badlands of the US-Mexican border, and from five-star Manhattan hotels to the brutal reality of federal prison and a 25-year sentence, we follow his story as his fortunes rise and fall. A true crime memoir that reads like fiction, Smuggler is an incredible and revealing trip into the world of international drug trafficking.

Drug smuggler nation

Author : Stephen Snelders
Publisher : Manchester University Press
ISBN 13 : 1526151383
Total Pages : 316 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (261 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Drug smuggler nation by : Stephen Snelders

Download or read book Drug smuggler nation written by Stephen Snelders and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2021-02-09 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why did the international drug regulatory regime of the twentieth century fail to stop an explosive increase in trade and consumption of illegal drugs? This study investigates the histories of smugglers and criminal entrepreneurs in the Netherlands who succeeded in turning the country into the so-called ‘Colombia of Europe’ or, ‘the international drug supermarket’. Increasing state regulations and interventions led to the proliferation of a ‘hydra’ of small, anarchic groups and networks ideally suited to circumvent the enforcement of regulation. Networks of smugglers and suppliers of heroin, cocaine, cannabis, XTC, and other drugs were organized without a strict formal hierarchy and based on personal relations and cultural affinities rather than on institutional arrangements. These networks created a thriving underground industry of illegal synthetic drug laboratories and indoor cannabis cultivation in the Netherlands itself. Their operations were made possible and developed because of the deep historical social and cultural ‘embeddedness’ of criminal anarchy in Dutch society. Using examples from the rich history of drug smuggling, Drug smuggler nation investigates the deeper and hidden grounds of the illegal drug trade, and its effects on our drug policies.

Mr Nice

Author : Howard Marks
Publisher : Random House
ISBN 13 : 0099542153
Total Pages : 578 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (995 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Mr Nice by : Howard Marks

Download or read book Mr Nice written by Howard Marks and published by Random House. This book was released on 2010 with total page 578 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the mid 1980s Howard Marks had forty three aliases, eighty nine phone lines and owned twenty five companies throughout the world. Whether bars, recording studios or offshore banks, all were money laundering vehicles serving the core activity: dope dealing. Marks began to deal small amounts of hashish while doing a postgraduate philosopy course at Oxford, but soon he was moving much larger quantities. At the height of his career he was smuggling consignments of up to fifty tons from Pakistan and Thailand to America and Canada and had contact with organisations as diverse as MI6, the CIA, the IRA and the Mafia. Mr Nice is Howard Mark's extraordinary story.

Kingpin

Author : Richard Stratton
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1628727284
Total Pages : 341 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (287 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Kingpin by : Richard Stratton

Download or read book Kingpin written by Richard Stratton and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-05-02 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This fast-paced sequel to Smuggler's Blues is a harrowing and at times comical journey through the criminal justice system at the height of America's War on Plants. Captured in the lobby of the Sheraton Senator Hotel at LAX following a fifteen-year run smuggling marijuana and hashish as part of the hippie mafia, Richard Stratton began a new journey. Kingpin tells the story of the eight years that followed, through two federal trials and the underworld of the federal prison system, at a time when it was undergoing unprecedented expansion due to the War on Drugs. Stratton was shipped by bus from LA's notorious Glass House to jails and prisons across the country, a softening process known as diesel therapy. Resisting pressure to falsely implicate his friend and mentor, Norman Mailer, he was convicted in his second trial under the kingpin statute and sentenced to twenty-five years without the possibility of parole. While doing time in prisons from Manhattan's Criminal Hilton to rural Pennsylvania, Virginia, Kentucky, and New York, he witnessed brutality as well as camaraderie, rampant trafficking of contraband, and crimes by both guards and convicts. He first learned the lessons of survival. Then he learned to prevail, becoming a jailhouse lawyer and winning the reversal of his kingpin sentence and eventual release. Kingpin includes cameos by Norman Mailer, Muhammad Ali, and John Gotti, and an account of the author's friendship with mafia don Joe Stassi, a legendary hitman from the early days of the mob who knew gangsters Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel, and Abe Zwillman and has insights into the killing of Dutch Schultz and the Kennedy assassination. Kingpin is the second volume in Richard Stratton's trilogy, Remembrance of the War on Plants.