Book Description
All His Dreams for Wealth and Power Came True.
Then the Nightmare Began.
As a young man in his twenties with an insatiable thirst for money and power, Jorge Valdés worked his way up inside Colombia's powerful Medellin drug cartel. His key position as head of U.S. operations brought him into direct contact with presidents, generals, Hollywood celebrities, hired killers, and kidnappers. This Cuban immigrant, raised in poverty, was living the high life in more ways than one.
Then an incredible thing happened: Jorge Valdés encountered a person much more powerful than the strongest drug lord, someone who offered something more satisfying than women, drugs, money, prestige, or power.
Coming Clean: The True Story of a Cocaine Drug Lord and His Unexpected Encounter with God offers an insider's view of the drug industry and the greed that drives it. More important, it weaves a compelling story of forgiveness, renewal, and hope.
Customer Reviews:
Selling your soul to the Devil.......2007-02-22
What an amazing transformation. Jorge is man who has the intelligence to run a legitimate business at an early age. Dealing drugs offers him more money then he can fathom. His newly discovered faith turns him on the straight, narrow and happier path. The old saying is true, money cannot buy happiness.
Interesting Story .......2006-12-31
I had to go to jail for possession and happened to come across this book in the library there. I found it impossible to put down once I started to read it. If you get a chance I suggest to anyone to give this book a chance.
New Beginnings.......2003-11-16
From the very first page the reader is drawn into this first person account of the life of Jorge Valdez, former drug smuggler and money launderer.This is a compelling story of intrigue, corruption, power, and greed.
Valdez describes the culture, family life and values of a Cuban family trying to find their dream in America. Valdez emigrated from Cuba with his family when he was 10 years old. He was an honor student and was planning a career in banking and accounting.
A series of events changed his life. He became involved with a drug cartel. By age 20, Valdez was in charge of the entire U.S. operation that included smuggling, distributing drugs, and money laundering.
Valdez eventually got caught and spent a total of 11 years in federal prison. The account of his family's support during his trial and imprisonment is especially touching.
The story is written by author Ken Abraham. The reader is given insight into the world of drug dealers, the prison system, and Valdez's personal ethical values. The book is a well-written account of the dramatic change in the life of Jorge Valdez. This is the testimony of a man freed from the power of sin by the transforming power of Jesus Christ.
Vignettes of fellow prisoners help the reader understand the consequences of bad judgment and wrong choices. The story takes you behind prison walls. The contrast of life in prison before and after Jorge's conversion give solid evidence of a man changed by the power of Christ.
While in prison Jorge earned an undergraduate degree from Southeastern Bible College and most of his credits for a graduate degree from Wheaton College. After his release Valdez completed his graduate studies at Wheaton College and went on to Loyola University to earn a doctorate in New Testament theology.
Valdez has made himself vulnerable in this honest portrayal of his strengths and weaknesses. It is a story of depravation, faith, forgiveness, and a new start. I am looking forward to another installment relating the miracles of Coming Clean Ministries in Tyrone, a nondenominational Christian ministry. This ministry seeks to intercept youth who are on destructive paths by redirecting their lives to become productive members of society.
Very Spirtual.......2003-09-30
I am not a book reader, George gave me a copy of the book when I visited him in Atlanta and the following week I was on vacation in Florida picked up his book and read the entire book could not find a stopping point may God continue to bless his works as he is now touching so many lifes. It took Jesus Christ plus a lot of courage George to write this book.
A compulsive memoir. Be prepared to lose a night's sleep!.......2003-06-09
When I saw this book on the shelf at my local library, I assumed this would just be some preachy, manipulative work in which a drug dealer tries to make his past vanish by finding God. As a lapsed Catholic I found this concept rather weak, but I picked up the book with a (reasonably) open mind, and started reading.
By the time he was in his twenties Jorge Valdes was a cocaine dealer on the rise, dealing to the rich and famous, the living embodiment of wealth and power and luxury; leading a life most of us can imagine only in our wildest dreams. The life of the rich with all the negative excess that goes with it: drugs, pornography, prostitution, infidelity, murder, double-crosses, torture, kidnapping. Enough drama and suspense for a Robert Ludlum novel. The only difference is, this is the real deal. But, as Valdes soon disovers there is a price to all this; and he finds the courage and committment to steer his life onto a new, positive path.
Reading this stirred my intense interest in the good and evil that all human beings are capable of, what Karl Jung called "the shadow". Obviously some of the content of this book is tough to take (Especially Valdes' graphic account of him and an associate being tortured by police for refusing to leak info), but the honesty with which Valdes tells his story and the glimpse the reader gets into his former life makes for fascinating and sometimes horrific reading.
Even though I gave up my religious faith long ago, I still found myself moved by Mr Valdes's committment to his beliefs and how dramatically his life has changed for the better because of his faith. COMING CLEAN is quite simply a remarkable story. I challenge anyone to read this book and finish it without feeling affected. A very moving and powerful work that could only have come from the pen of someone who has lived and breathed the life... and survived to help prevent others from making the same mistakes he did.
Book Description
In this groundbreaking work, leading historian Felipe Fernández-Armesto tells the story of our hemisphere as a whole, showing why it is impossible to understand North, Central, and South America in isolation without turning to the intertwining forces that shape the region. With imagination, thematic breadth, and his trademark wit, Fernández-Armesto covers a range of cultural, political, and social subjects, taking us from the dawn of human migration to North America to the Colonial and Independence periods to the “American Century” and beyond. Fernández-Armesto does nothing less than revise the conventional wisdom about cross-cultural exchange, conflict, and interaction, making and supporting some brilliantly provocative conclusions about the Americas’ past and where we are headed.
Customer Reviews:
Interesting read - although not definite.......2006-03-11
As the author says at the end of the book, this study of the full hemisphere - what is has in common and what trends set North and South apart - is quite new.
It is a refreshing read, one which gives a good perspective and questions rightfully the current cliche about North ever-lasting superiority vs South. The first half of the book is quite educating in its history of the South domination over the North and its causes. You get to look at the whole American continent from a brand new perspective.
The author also thinks that North domination will not last and that the Americas may someday be a more homogeneous group of countries.
Overall, I found all the theories in the book interesting and the historical background extremely educating. And the book is very short, so that's a profitable reading.
Some theories on how North and South developed apart........2004-09-14
I will not rate this book 1 or 2 stars just because it is less history and more theory, but I think some of the previous reviewers are right in disagreeing with some of the authors statements. Fernandez-Armesto comes up with some quite interesting reasons why Latin America developed so differently than the United States and Canada. This is less history and more theory and conjecture. The reader should at least be open to some of these theories, because they can explain some of the reasons north and south developed so differently. Perhaps it was economic, political, or geographical, but Fernandez-Armesto tries desperatly to point that it was not the ethnic make up of the population. I agree with the author, but he should make that point up front, rather than dance around it.
This book is an OK read. Some of the other books in this series are more history than theory, so I was a bit put off by the subtitle of a hemispheric history, when in fact it is some theories about the inequality in the continent. The reader should keep an open mind to these theories, since they may prove to be true.
Looking for America -- and getting lost.......2003-10-24
This is a very strange book.
To be blunt, despite occasional flashes of insight, Fernandez-Armesto's grasp of facts seems shaky. Early in the book, he announced the great achievements at Chaco Canyon were "between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries A.D." In reality, the Chaco Culture (as it is properly known) began in the late 800s and collapsed about 1110 A.D.
He regards the Monroe Doctrine as an American idea, enacted at a time when the United States had four frigates to enforce its provisions. In reality it was a post-Napoleonic British initiative, designed to prevent any European power developing an empire somewhere in the Americas that might someday challenge Britain.
He says in Texas "you can see people in what amounts to the state dress: Stetson and cowboy boots." State dress? From personal experience, "Stetson and cowboy boots" are common throughout the Southwest US and northern Mexico.
When describing the Maya, who flourished until about 1000 A.D., he writes "the system was designed not so much to communicate as to keep secrets." So? That was true of European society in the same time span; it was a common feature of most societies. People kept secrets to protect their advantages, the era of the tell-all blabbermouth didn't begin until the Protestant Reformation. The Scientific Revolution was based on sharing knowledge, not on keeping secrets.
He is fascinated by Tierra del Fuego, almost ignores Canada, and completely ignores what became the industrial heartland of North America because of neaby natural resources amd a superb network of lakes, rivers and canals. It's as if a history of England said Hadrian's Wall was built in 400 A.D., emphasized the Isle of Man, ignored Cornwall and treated the Magna Carta as a quaint scrap of paper.
One of his most curious assertions is that "it is a mistake to suppose that great events must have great causes or long drawn-out origins." On this basis, the Roman invasion, Queen Boudicea, Hadrian's Wall, Hastings, the Magna Carta and the Armada are relatively unimportant events in forming today's sense of English identity. Or . . . what does Christ, who lived 2000 years ago, have to do with today's church?
He also overlooks the fact that for much of the European occupation of the Americas, Latin America was the richest and most dynamic region. It wasn't until the Industrial Revolution that North America began its rise to the dominance, a time span of 150 years out of the 500 years of European involvement.
In other words, the book is packed with oddball observations, strange conclusions and whimsical flights of fancy. It made me wonder if Fernandez-Armesto has ever visited America; it reads like an Englishman's blinkered vision from the confines of his fusty, musty, dusty private club.
I doubt if many Americans will recognize the view of this hemisphere that he offers. Granted, there are some rare flashes of insight, but they are few, far between, and well-disguised. To describe the contents in Texas terms, Fernandez-Armesto is "all hat and no cattle."
Inadaquate.......2003-09-24
Fernandez-Armesto never offers an explanation for the wide gap that developed between North and South America in matters of economics, science, political stability, cultural influence and the like. He correctly perceives that European exploration/conquest was the single spark that ignited the modern history of North and South and notes similar natural resource advantages found throughout the entire hemisphere. Ultimately, however, the author throws up his hands and essentially proclaims LUCK to be the causal factor of the vast divergences that developed and continue to develop. Indeed, perhaps Fernandez-Armesto's identification of the cause should best be called "dumb luck," as his snotty anti-North biases color the US and Canada as undeserving village idiots who preposterously won some cosmic historical lottery. I'll give two stars for the author's occasionally engaging brand of schmaltzy pop-erudition in the beginning of the book, which deals with historical beginnings. Thereafter, one gets only fact-be-damned sanctimonious laziness.
A Gem Among the Modern Library Chronicles.......2003-05-19
Pop history has few better writers than Felipe Fernandez-Armesto and he proves it again with the new addition to the always wonderful Modern Library Chronicles series, The Americas (A Hemispheric History). It is, in essence, a comparative essay showing how the idea of one America became the concept, through time, of two Americas. He does not use any trite triumphalist thinking in writing about America and one of the most fascinating aspects of the book is the author's demonstration that the similarities between the two continents, as opposed to their usually endlessly discussed differences, are numerous and essential in understanding their histories. This book is a refreshing look at the "New World" in a more global perspective. His examples, particularly from South America, are refreshing and insightful. The writing is a pure pleasure. A wonderful new book from a great series.
Book Description
Considerable attention has been given to Cuban poet, essayist, and activist José MartÃ’s 1891 essay âNuestra América,â but relatively little has been paid to the rest of the journalistic work that Martà produced during his fourteen-year exile in the United States. In José MartÃ’s Our America, Jeffrey Belnap and Raúl Fernández present essays from Latin American, Caribbean, and U.S.-based scholars who consider MartÃ’s rich and underexplored body of work and position Martà as an emblem of New American studies.
A Cuban exile from 1881 to 1895, Martà was a correspondent writing in New York for various Latin American newspapers. Grasping the significance of rising U.S. imperial power, he came to understand the Americas as a complex system of kindredâbut not equalânational formations whose cultural and political integrity was threatened by the overbearing aggressiveness of the United States. This collection explores how in his journalistic work Martà critiques U.S. racism, imperialism, and capitalism; warns Latin America of impending U.S. geographical, cultural, and economic annexation; and calls for recognition of the diversity of America’s cultural voices. Reinforcing MartÃ’s hemispheric vision with essays by a wide range of scholars who investigate his analysis of the United States, his significance as a Latino outsider, and his analyses of Latin American cultural politics, this volume explores the affinities between MartÃ’s thought and current reexaminations of what it means to study America.
José MartÒs Our America offers a new understanding of MartÒs ambiguous and problematic relation with the United States and will engage scholars and students in American, Latin American, and Latino studies as well as those interested in cultural, postcolonial, gender, and ethnic studies.
Contributors. Jeffrey Belnap, Raúl Fernández, Ada Ferrer, Susan Gillman, George Lipsitz, Oscar MartÃ, David Noble, Donald E. Pease, Beatrice Pita, Brenda Gayle Plummer, Susana Rotker, José David SaldÃvar, Rosaura Sánchez, Enrico Mario SantÃ, Doris Sommer, Brook Thomas
Product Description
Based on an exhibition at the John Carter Brown Library in 1998-1999, this richly illustrated work presents the full range of New World animals as recorded by early naturalists.
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The Geopolitics of Security in the Americas: Hemispheric Denial from Monroe to Clinton
Martin Sicker
Manufacturer: Praeger Publishers
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Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0275972550 |
Book Description
Sicker examines the role of the United States within the Western Hemisphere and the geopolitical and geostrategic factors that have helped shape its policies in the region. He demonstrates that such factors have contributed heavily to establishing the patterns of state development and interstate relations in the Western Hemisphere throughout its modern history. The prevailing geopolitical environment has been conditioned to a large extent by the emergence of the United States as the unquestionably dominant power in the extensive region. However, that status did not exist at the time it achieved its independence. It was brought about through almost incessant conflict with, and expansion at the expense of, other states, nations, and peoples over more than a century. As a result, the concerns and interests of the dominant power became and remain, of necessity, factors that states beyond the borders of the United States must take into consideration when pursuing their own national interests and policies. As Sicker amply demonstrates, failure to do so will often produce undesirable consequences for the offending state. As is clear, however, the states of the hemisphere have their own geopolitical interests and concerns independent of, and sometimes conflicting with, those of the United States. As Sicker shows throughout the volume, and especially in his analysis of inter-American conflicts, many of the nations of Latin America have unresolved territorial controversies with their neighbors that date to their origins as independent states. Because of this troubled geopolitical legacy, there have been numerous conflicts among the states of Latin America, some of which the United States has attempted to mediate or arbitrate, and some that seem impervious to a permanent negotiated settlement. This is a provocative analysis that will be of interest to scholars, students, researchers, and policymakers involved with inter-American relations and U.S. diplomacy.
Book Description
A collection of 27 papers presented by scholars from all parts of the Americas at the 1975 New World Conference.
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Race Mixture in Nineteenth-Century U.S. and Spanish American Fictions: Gender, Culture, and Nation Building
Debra J. Rosenthal
Manufacturer: The University of North Carolina Press
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Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0807855642
Release Date: 2003-10-31 |
Book Description
Race mixture has played a formative role in the history of the Americas, from the western expansion of the United States to the political consolidation of emerging nations in Latin America. Debra J. Rosenthal examines nineteenth-century authors in the United States and Spanish America who struggled to give voice to these contemporary dilemmas about interracial sexual and cultural mixing.
Rosenthal argues that many literary representations of intimacy or sex took on political dimensions, whether advocating assimilation or miscegenation or defending the status quo. She also examines the degree to which novelists reacted to beliefs about skin differences, blood taboos, incest, desire, or inheritance laws. Rosenthal discusses U.S. authors such as James Fenimore Cooper, Catharine Maria Sedgwick, Walt Whitman, William Dean Howells, and Lydia Maria Child as well as contemporary novelists from Cuba, Peru, and Ecuador, such as Gertrudis Gomez de Avellaneda, Clorinda Matto de Turner, and Juan Leon Mera. With her multinational approach, Rosenthal explores the significance of racial hybridity to national and literary identity and participates in the wider scholarly effort to broaden critical discussions about America to include the Americas.
Customer Reviews:
The best little key in my library.......2003-02-22
I've been using this simple key since I was a college student in Minnesota over forty years ago. Although I now own several large comprehensive keys, this is the first key I try, even though it may not be spring and I now live in Connecticut. It will usually send me quite easily at least to a family, probably to a genus, getting me through what might be the most annoying portion of my larger keys.
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Fungal Conservation: Issues and Solutions (British Mycological Society Symposia)
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
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ASIN: 0521803632 |
Book Description
Threats to fungi and fungal diversity throughout the world have prompted debates as to how fungi can be conserved. Should it be the site, habitat, or host that is conserved? All of these issues are addressed in this volume, but coverage goes beyond mere debate with constructive guidance for management of nature in ways beneficial to fungi. Different parts of the world experience different problems and a range of examples are presented: from Finland in the North to Kenya in the South, Washington State, USA in the West to Fujian Province, China in the East.
Books:
- Confessions of a Yakuza: A Life in Japan's Underworld
- Confessions of an English Opium Eater (Penguin Classics)
- Cottage for Sale, Must Be Moved: A Woman Moves a House to Make a Home
- Daniel Boone: The Life and Legend of an American Pioneer (An Owl Book)
- Divine Invasions: A Life of Philip K. Dick
- Eccentrics: A Study of Sanity and Strangeness (Kodansha Globe)
- Elia Kazan: A Life
- Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues
- Evita: In My Own Words
- Fall Down Laughing: How Squiggy Caught Multiple Sclerosis and Didn't Tell Nobody
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