The Dope

Magisterial and immensely readable… True crime at its historical best, replete with all the larger-than-life characters and thrills and spills of a Netflixnarco drama * Financial Times *With the skills of a fine historian and the verve of a true storyteller Benjamin T. Smith unearths the twisted roots of the catastrophic drug war. A fascinating, surreal and tragic tale * Ioan Grillo, author of El Narco and Blood Gun Money *A compelling narrative that at last gives us a history-for-all of Mexico’s all-out drug war * Ed Vulliamy, author of Amexica: War Along the Borderline *Smith’s depth of knowledge astonishes… This searing history leaves a mark * Publishers Weekly *A well-researched, sobering view of the damage that Americans’ need to get high wreaks on [their] neighbors * Kirkus *A roiling, rambunctious trek through all that created the modern Mexican drug trade … Really great stuff, really great reading. * Sam Quinones, author of Dreamland *The Dope offers an expansive and compulsively readable popular history that successfully upends more than a century of false rhetoric, shattering the most insidious and persistent myths about Mexico’s drug trade … A vital corrective. * Francisco Cantú, author of The Line Becomes a River *At last, a history that truly makes sense of the sound and fury of the Mexican drug trade * Héctor Aguilar Camín *The Dope is breathtaking. It casts an unforgiving light on the dark corners of a sinister history. * Sergio Aguayo *Benjamin Smith dispels the myths with a much-needed dose of reality … [A] crisply written, deftly narrated book. * Daniel Immerwahr author of How to Hide an Empire *

Benjamin T. Smith is one of the foremost historians of modern Mexico. He is a professor in modern Latin American history at the University of Warwick, and was Associate Professor of Mexican History at Michigan State University. His previous books have explored politics, violence, Catholicism and journalism in modern Mexico. Benjamin has written widely on Mexico for the Guardian, The Jacobin, and Dissent and has appeared on Sky TV, BBC Radio, Channel 4 News and France24. He also provides expert witness accounts for Mexican asylum seekers escaping gang violence.