The Dope

Fascinating ... Smith tells of the forgotten men and women who have shaped Mexico's narco trade - bringing these ghosts back to wild and violent life.

Toby Muse, author of Kilo: Life and Death Inside the Secret World of the Cocaine Cartels

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

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

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

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

A roiling, rambunctious trek through all that created the modern Mexican drug trade ... Really great stuff, really great reading.

Sam Quinones, author of Dreamland

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

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

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