 | Snowblind: A Brief Career in the Cocaine Trade by Robert Sabbag
Buy used from: $11.20 A classic - contains lots of fascinating detail about "Zachary Swan" and his complex coke-smuggling schemes. Filled with colorful characters. Excellent writing; poetic and humorous.
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 | BLOW: How a Small-Town Boy Made $100 Million with the Medellin Cocaine Cartel and Lost It All by Bruce Porter
Buy new: $10.85 / Used from: $2.29 Another coke-smuggling biography; not as well written as Snowblind, but still fun. Adapted into a so-so movie starring Johnny Depp.
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 | Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream by Hunter S. Thompson
Buy new: $10.08 / Used from: $4.70 Another classic; alternately hilarious and lyrical. Adapted into a movie featuring (natch) Johnny Depp. I liked the movie version but it's only good if you're intimately acquainted with the book.
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 | Candy: A Novel of Love and Addiction by Luke Davies
Buy new: $10.04 / Used from: $5.94 Fast paced, gripping tale of love & heroin addiction in Australia; features lots of sex, scams and heroin detail (synthesis, freebasing, etc.) Don't worry, it still has a moral of sorts.
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 | Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh
Buy new: $10.17 / Used from: $0.75 Like Candy but in harder-to-read Welsh; funny, but at times too glib for comfort
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 | The Corner by David Simon
Buy used from: $6.22 A year in the life of heroin addicts living in the slums of Baltimore. Heartbreaking, revelatory.
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 | Down by the River: Drugs, Money, Murder, and Family by Charles Bowden
Buy new: $11.52 / Used from: $2.62 Murder of D.E.A. agent's brother prompts investigation that leads to Amado Carillo (Mexican drug lord, a.k.a "The Lord of the Skies")
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 | Drug Lord: The Life & Death of a Mexican Kingpin-A True Story by Terrence E. Poppa
Buy new: $12.20 / Used from: $8.74 Bio of Pablo Acosta (predecessor to Amado Carillo)
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 | Kings of Cocaine Inside the Medellin Cartel an Astonishing True Story of Murder Money and International Corruption by Guy Gugliotta
Buy used from: $13.99 Chronicles the rise of the Medellin cartel in the 1980's; Pablo Escobar & co. They were making $2 billion a year... tax free.
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