Kilo: life and death inside the secret world of the cocaine cartels

Veteran journalist Toby Muse goes inside Colombia's notorious drug cartels to offer a portrait of the drug trade unlike anything before, one that follows a kilo of cocaine from harvest to teh smuggling ships and explores the human stories at every stage of the drug's complicated exodus from Colombia. Tailing farmers through the fields where they grow the coca bush and bloody small-town marketplaces where they sell their product, Muse lays bare the complex reality of cocaine as both scourge and savior for an impoverished countryside. As the kilo enters the urban jungle, Muse interviews sicarios who kill to ensure the drug's safe passage, the gang leaders in Medellin who protect the kilo in the city, the women in love with the deadliest drug lords, and even the drug lords themselves -- coming face-to-face with the chaotic heart of the billion-dollar cocaine trade. Traveling both sides of the drug war's front lines, Muse traces the paths of Colombia's law enforcement and the US Coast Guard as they try to stop the kilo from reaching its destination, and examines the geopolitical fallout of cocaine's power -- looking at how Colombia's chief export has helped create the bloodiest drug war in Mexican history and capitalized off of neighboring Venezuela's rapidly collapsing economy. What emerges is a fearlessly reported, exhaustive account of a vast criminal enterprise, as sprawling as it is ruthless, and the collateral damage wrought by one of the longest running conflicts in the Americas. Featuring sixteen pages of exclusive photos, Kilo presents a gripping, unforgettable portrait of the bloodshed and dark madness at the heart of the cocaine business.