Best nonfiction book on international affairs
AWARD YEAR: 2001
AWARD NAME: The Cornelius Ryan Award 2001
RECIPIENT: Mark Bowden
AFFILIATION: Grove/Atlantic
HONORED WORK: “Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the World’s Greatest Outlaw”
This book is a page-turning account of the hunt to track down and kill a South American drug lord. Killing Pablo combines the verve of a thriller with on-the-record testimony from people who were in the middle of the action. It tells the story of how one man, Pablo Escobar, destroyed thousands of lives and very nearly Colombia itself in the 1980s and early 1990s. It took the coordinated efforts of the American and Colombian governments, and the work of death squads that matched Pablo’s own forces for brutality, to bring him down.
Citation for Excellence:
Sam Quinones
University of New Mexico Press
“Ттае Tales From Another Mexico”