Here are five must-read books I recommend.
Since I rekindled my hobby of reading again in 2021, I’ve read a lot of books, too many to count, I would add. However, every year, certain books captivate me and leave an impression. I read books about everything from psychedelics, organized crime, European history, investing books, and global geopolitics. Every book listed below is a must-read in my eyes and is worth picking up, so let’s get to it.
1. Blood Gun Money: How America arms gangs and cartels by Ioan Grillo
2021
I'm a huge fan of Ioan Grillo’s work, and he is the reason I became so fixated and fascinated with organized crime in Mexico. This book has modern-day relevance, as the title says, it goes into the ways America actively arms criminal organizations this including the Mexican drug Cartels, that operate both in the United States and Canada. It also talks about how loopholes and loose laws allow this to happen. This issue also affects Canada, CBC wrote in February of this year, “In 2024, 88 per cent of the 717 crime guns seized by the Toronto Police Service were traced to the United States”. The Toronto Sun also wrote late last year, “Toronto Police Service has seized 659 crime guns so far in 2024,” said spokesperson Stephanie Sayer. The article continues and says, “Of the crime guns seized this year that have been successfully sourced, 84% came from the United States,” said Sayer.
2. Target Tehran: How Israel Is Using Sabotage, Cyberwarfare, Assassination – and Secret Diplomacy – to Stop a Nuclear Iran and Create a New Middle East 2023
I picked this book up in June of last year and didn’t get to reading it until December of last year, seeing as how Israel and America just bombed Iran’s Nuclear facilities. Two big points of this book are how Israel managed to infiltrate Iran and gain access to the top-secret location where Iran held their nuclear files and stole them, and the other detailing how the historic Abraham Accords became a reality.
3. The Dope: The Real History of the Mexican Drug Trade 2021
Benjamin T Smith does an excellent job of walking the reader through the drug trade in Mexico, starting in the early 1900s up to the 1990s. This book is critical for anyone interested in organized crime in Mexico.
4. American Cartel Inside the Battle to Take Down the Opioid Industry 2022
I first started reading this book in February, and it was the first book I reviewed. This book sums up the beginning of America’s opioid problem, which would later go from OxyContin to Heroin and evolve into Fentanyl. It tells the stories of the people involved in trying to bring to justice the Pharmaceutical companies and distributors to justice for their actions, while giving a raw look at the toll it took on the people involved.
5. The Executioners Men: Los Zetas, Rogue Soldiers, Criminal Entrepreneurs and the Shadow State They Created. 2015
Another fantastic book on Narco literature, The Executioners' Men, dives into the history of the most violent Cartel to exist. From their origins, the many wars they fought, to their violent, brutal expansionist takeover that left Mexican citizens traumatized, this book is the definitive guide on Los Zetas.
There you have it, folks, five great reads waiting to happen. I hope you are intrigued by at least one of these books and pick one of them up and enjoy it. Remember to subscribe so you never miss a post!
