American Desperado

Born into a Mafia family, Jon Roberts recounts witnessing his first murder at seven, serving as a hunter-assassin in Vietnam and returning to New York as a top nightclub promoter before moving to Miami, where he became a leading smuggler for the Medellin Cartel. His reminiscences are linked by biographical sections from journalist Evan Wright. Roberts, who featured in the 2006 documentary Cocaine Cowboys, describes a circle of acquaintances that ran from Richard Pryor, Jimi Hendrix and O.J. Simpson to Meyer Lansky, Carlo Gambino and Manuel Noriega, and says he was eventually co-opted by the CIA and drawn into an alliance with the US government. The book was published in 2011.

Prospect.io chief executive Vincenzo Ruggiero called it highly entertaining and recommended it to anyone who, like him, enjoys mafia and drug stories.