American Kingpin

Absolutely gripping

What made the experience of listening to American Kingpin the most enjoyable?

This story is told like the author was alongside Ross Ulbricht for his entire life which makes me believe some of the smaller details of the book are just entered for the sake of making the story complete. However, because of this, the story flows extremely well and paints a detailed picture of Ross's life

Any additional comments?

This book is absolutely gripping. This book starts off slowly, but soon gets completely riveting. It describes how The Silk Road grew from a small site selling magic mushrooms to the world's biggest online drug store, netting millions for Ross Ulbricht. Although the minor details could be fabricated, Bilton has pieced together the key points of the growth of the Silk Road and takes you on an epic journey from the start to the end of the Silk Road leaving you in no doubt as to Ross's guilt. An excellent book.

13 people found this helpful

Thought provoking and addictive listen!

I wasn't enamoured with the writing or narration for this book. It doesn't flow well in places and so many phrases and sentences are repeated, I found myself rolling my eyes and tutting in the same way I do when watching a poorly presented documentary on TV.
The narration sounds a little robotic to begin with, but you do get used to it as the story unfolds.

With my criticisms out the way, it's important to note that I was fascinated from beginning to end. I had heard of the Silk Road, but knew little about it all.
What is clear, is that the author Nick Bilton has done his research (as mentioned at the start and end of the book); the meticulous details and chronological presentation shows how carefully Bilton worked to piece the facts together.
It is an incredible and enthralling true story and despite some misgivings regarding writing and narration, I could not wait to hear the next installment on my daily commute.
Recommend.

19 people found this helpful

Enthralling insight into the dark web

I didn’t know what to expect when I downloaded this book, but I’m very glad I did for it is a gripping and astonishing story about the creation of a massive world-wide online business facilitating the sale of drugs, guns and even body parts using the hidden world of the dark web aided by the employment untraceable bitcoin currency. The pacy writing style and the exciting cat and mouse tussle between those running the illicit website and the powers of law and order make this enthralling listen.

The narrator is excellent and helps create the feeling that one is experiencing the thrill of the chase.

6 people found this helpful

excellent story

I loved this book. The narration is excellent and keeps the listener engaged. The story is fairly fast paced and fascinating. I also found it pretty shocking in places.

5 people found this helpful

Gripping, thought-provoking, wonderful

I could not stop listening - I had to audio-walk so much this w/e that I eventually had to leave the dog at home as she was exhausted.

This is real-life Breaking Bad. A pretty normal, suburban, white, educated young man in Texas gets an idea to make it easy to buy and sell weed on-line, noticing that Bitcoin and the Dark Web have combined to make this proposition a real possibility. Hey-presto Ross Ulbricht finds himself running Amazon's evil twin from his laptop. The book reads like Breaking Bad, but is claimed to be close to reality. It is rather in the style (and brilliance) of Michael Lewis, perhaps a touch more racy, but maybe that is the material. There are plot twists here that are mind boggling.

The story is deeper than a simple crime thriller. It touches on the toxic distrust and loathing some Americans feel for their government, while at the same time providing a morality tale which shows why humans need a state - Ross gets robbed and scammed by the criminal elements he now frequents. It points at the cost and disfunction of the law and order infrastructure of the US (though there are also some real heroes). Highlights the problem of drugs - that there is so much demand out there, people desperate to buy drugs and pay large sums of money for them. How a criminal master-mind is born : Ulbricht really does order murders, but he is also just a stressed 28 year old, with a big problem he really needs to solve. There is also the business aspect - some of the challenges are similar to other 'unicorn' internet startups such as Facebook or Twitter. Less problems related to sales tax but more on the laundering side.

Narration. Perfect. Soft American voice is so unobtrusive you hardly notice it. Gentle inflexion for quotes from female and other characters without obvious accents and voices - very subtle, keeps you on track without intruding on what is meant to be a factual (non-fiction) account.

4 people found this helpful

Can't believe it's not fiction!

Really loved this. The story is well told with a performance from the narrator that does this story justice. It was fascinating to see both sides of the story and shows that both criminals and law enforcement are just people. Could not recommend this more.

4 people found this helpful

Can’t put it away

I learned about the story though the podcast “Case files” and found it so interesting, I immediately purchased the audiobook and can’t stop listening. I constantly have to remind myself that this really happened.

2 people found this helpful

Absolutely superb

Excellently researched, written and narrated. The author takes you into the complex mind of a criminal. Just as in "Batman Begins" rather than lazily depict the him as an evil criminal mastermind, the psychology and mind of "Ra's al Ghul" is explored and ultimately enables the viewer to understand why some people are motivated to do things. It is the easiest thing in the world to place labels on people. This book makes no apologies for the protagonist's crimes but at the same time takes the effort to dig deep and tell a fascinating story.

2 people found this helpful

Brilliantly-written mean-spirited garbage

I really enjoyed this book. It was exceptionally well written, it was paced perfectly, personalities were well-rounded and the story was well researched to some extent. However, there's something extremely alarming about this book which hits you as soon as it's finished - the author has hold of the establishment narrative on drugs and drug laws, and the key concepts of why Ross Ulbricht did what he did, are absolutely strangled out of existence with an overbearing ignorance of Ross' views, and also, an extremely mean-spirited view of Ross' life.

The author speaks with a laughably self-conscious commentary as though he is a billionaire philanderer who fell face-first into a bucket of success and cash, and who wrote the book in-between his quest as the modern day Alexander The Great. He sneers at almost every aspect of Ross' life and never fails to write mean-spirited quips about his appearance, his love-life, his lack of success in business ventures (which is somewhat dubious).

Many of these extremely negative and personal attacks on Ross are immediately contradicted as soon as we get into the remainder of the story - at first he describes Ross as a loser who should have just clung to the sidewalk like a pile of excrement, who was cheated on and a complete loser at life - but as this book continues with this commentary, something becomes extremely apparent: the author seemingly despises the average man and his foibles.

And it's very obvious - the author has spent so much time with his lips welded to the rear of the wealthy, that his hatred of working-class folks like Ross; with loves and losses, an average life, struggling to escape a life as a highly-educated barista or retail worker in an economy rapidly becoming degrading for most.

Ross is absolutely emblematic of most working people in America - trying and struggling to remain above water, and yet every aspect of what is extremely common in this broken world, is a major point of contention to Bilton. Ulbricht's characteristics of thrift, passion and action in a political world of apathy, dedication to learning and reading in the age of BuzzFeed and low-attention-spans, refusal to spend his riches on anything ostentatious or gaudy (except $1 million for assassinations), are all thrown underneath Bilton's establishment juggernaut.

Ulbricht's parents have derided this book as being a public hanging, and essentially they are correct. It is absolutely a salient point in this book to discuss that Ross was an idealistically-driven person who undoubtedly was corrupted by his consigliere into becoming a mere criminal with ideals and ultimately the commissioner of several murders, but there is absolutely ZERO discussion of Ross' position, or even any acknowledgment that despite Ross' awful and extremely immoral behaviour, it is far preferable to have places where harm is reduced, and in which people can buy drugs, than to simply stick with what has gone before, and continue to allow harm.

It was estimated that 20% of purchases were going through the Silk Road; that's 20% of deals which occurred with arguably far less violence and harm. The model that Ulbricht had of simply "everything is permitted" was absurd and an artefact of libertarian views, but again - any discussion of this, extremely salient fact, the very reason for the creation of the website - is resolutely ignored.

Not only this, but the perspective of the purveyors of the war on drugs is reflected as a breathless and non-stop fawning, in a world in which, aside from these two "bad apples", law enforcement and drug agencies are the most devoted, unbiased, and wonderful human beings to ever grace the earth. Any criticism of them, or even Ross' criticisms of them, is also bulldozed by Bilton's cast-iron desire to pay hardcore homage to the establishment, to the extent it makes you wonder if he went to biblical lengths of rending his garments every time they failed to capture Ulbricht.

It's not to be said that Ulbricht's failures shouldn't be put out for all to see, and they are. He was responsible for harm, albeit FAR LESS than the harm that occurs right now without the use of drug markets, several of which offer testing kits with drugs to help reduce harm and also which offers safety information. Regardless of that fact, those who died did die as a consequence, and Ross was involved with violent people and commissioned violent acts. But even in reporting these, Bilton worships heavily at the altar of "just say no" (which since that point he has, in interviews, very disingenuously argued for the war on drugs being a disaster) and neoliberal nonsense - and essentially writes the entire story in favour of the DEA, FBI and CIA, and of course the NSA.

There are some huge questions simply left out about how Ross was caught, and even worse, about the consequences to democracy and harm reduction felt right now due to resolute ignorance of a view of harm reduction.

The obvious nonsense about "CAPTCHA leaking" the IP address made it clear to many that the FBI had turned to the anti-democratic agency du-jour, the NSA, to illegally capture where his server was. And it's extremely clear that was the case, others have suggested, that - the FBI and others struggled, and turned to the NSA. And then with a hey-presto and a hoop-te-doo and massive invasion of rights, they found where the server was.

And this is the failure of the book. None of the salient ideology that Ross discussed is addressed, none of the MANY criticisms of the FBI, CIA, NSA and DEA are present in any way whatsoever. And it's a shame because it was thoroughly entertaining, but at the same time extremely gauling because Bilton could not have pressed his lips closer to the rear of the establishment if he tried.

4 people found this helpful

shame about the narrator

Great story. well written. found the narrator depressing to listen to but overall worth listening to

1 person found this helpful