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Title details for Kingpin by Richard Stratton - Available

Kingpin

Prisoner of the War on Drugs (Cannabis Americanan: Remembrance of the War on Plants, Book 2)

#2 in series

by Richard Stratton
ebook
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This fast-paced sequel to Smuggler's Blues is a harrowing and at times comical journey through the criminal justice system at the height of America's War on Plants.
Captured in the lobby of the Sheraton Senator Hotel at LAX following a fifteen-year run smuggling marijuana and hashish as part of the hippie mafia, Richard Stratton began a new journey. Kingpin tells the story of the eight years that followed, through two federal trials and the underworld of the federal prison system, at a time when it was undergoing unprecedented expansion due to the War on Drugs. Stratton was shipped by bus from LA's notorious Glass House to jails and prisons across the country, a softening process known as diesel therapy. Resisting pressure to falsely implicate his friend and mentor, Norman Mailer, he was convicted in his second trial under the kingpin statute and sentenced to twenty-five years without the possibility of parole.
While doing time in prisons from Manhattan's Criminal Hilton to rural Pennsylvania, Virginia, Kentucky, and New York, he witnessed brutality as well as camaraderie, rampant trafficking of contraband, and crimes by both guards and convicts. He first learned the lessons of survival. Then he learned to prevail, becoming a jailhouse lawyer and winning the reversal of his kingpin sentence and eventual release.
Kingpin includes cameos by Norman Mailer, Muhammad Ali, and John Gotti, and an account of the author's friendship with mafia don Joe Stassi, a legendary hitman from the early days of the mob who knew gangsters Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel, and Abe Zwillman and has insights into the killing of Dutch Schultz and the Kennedy assassination.
Kingpin is the second volume in Richard Stratton's trilogy, Remembrance of the War on Plants.

  • Creators

  • Series

    Cannabis Americana: Remembrance of the War on Plants

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    May 2, 2017

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9781628727289
      • File size: 717 KB

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9781628727289
      • File size: 715 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Kirkus

      April 1, 2017
      A tense account of a rakish, unrepentant cannabis merchant's time in prison.Stratton, a former editor and publisher of High Times, follows up his previous memoir, Smuggler's Blues: A True Story of the Hippie Mafia (2016), with this sequel, beginning with his 1982 apprehension after jumping bail on a federal indictment in Maine. Prosecutors made his punishment a high priority, securing a 15-year sentence in that case and an additional indictment over a large shipment of hashish. For his part, Stratton avers, "I am glad that I decided to take the heat and do the time. The government is simply wrong when it comes to criminalizing this plant." He documents his odyssey through the federal prison system, where he learned to be his own lawyer, growing enamored with the power of language in both law and creative writing. The author notes that the government's fervor was also motivated by anger over his friendship with Norman Mailer: "For fuck's sake, give them Mailer and you walk. This is the era of government star-fucking in drug cases." As a high-profile prisoner, Stratton was shipped to several notorious institutions, like Manhattan's Metropolitan Correction Center, packed with mobsters like John Gotti (other notorious figures like Whitey Bulger lurk in the background here). Stratton's portrait of prison life is unsparing, and he notes that drugs remain ubiquitous and questions the pointless, punitive nature of the prisoners' daily experience. Yet he fondly regards the bonds formed with his fellow condemned (to whom he provided legal guidance) and his own hard-won inner growth: "The time I spent in this restricted space...entered me and changed me." This prison memoir stands out due to Stratton's elite criminal status and also the quality of his writing, which tends to be observant, mordant, and sometimes hilariously vulgar. A pulpy, well-crafted recollection of time behind bars packed with unsettling questions about society's embrace of mass imprisonment and the drug war.

      COPYRIGHT(2017) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Formats

  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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