Roberto Saviano
Zero Zero Zero
Look at Cocaine and All You See Is Powder. Look Through Cocaine and You See the World.
Penguin Press, 2015
What's inside?
Cocaine fuels underworld profits and Latin American violence.
Recommendation
Crime chronicler Roberto Saviano, author of the acclaimed book, Gomorrah, about the Naples-based Camorra Mafia, reports on the ever-expanding global cocaine business. He explores the trade’s Colombian roots, the Mexican cartels’ violent takeover, and America’s comprehensive but ineffectual response. Saviano’s prose is powerful, but problematic. Due to his exposé of the Italian mob, he lives under security watch in Italy and apparently wasn’t free to travel for the research and the interviews this sort of overview demands. Much of Saviano’s coverage on the violent, escape-prone Mexican drug cartel leader “El Chapo” and on pioneering, grandiose Colombian cocaine magnate Pablo Escobar seems to have depended on compilations and may be dated; he turns up few new stories. More troubling, his literary techniques may be somewhat novelistic. Even so, getAbstract recommends his enlightening in-depth study, written with verve, to law enforcement officials, international investors, global managers, policy makers and sociologists seeking new analysis of this oft-studied but challenging and relevant subject.
Summary
About the Author
Italian journalist Roberto Saviano has lived in Italy under constant armed guard since the 2006 publication of his best-selling book Gomorrah about organized crime in Naples.
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