The Last Pirate: A Father, His Son, and the Golden Age of Marijuana Audiobook

In the tradition of Blow and Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, The Last Pirate is a vivid, haunting and often hilarious memoir recounting the life of Big Tony, a family man who joined the biggest pot ring of the Reagan era and exploded his life in the process. Three decades later, his son came back to put together the pieces. As he relates his father’s rise from hey-man hippie dealer to multi-ton smuggler extraordinaire, Tony Dokoupil tells the larger history of marijuana and untangles the controversies still stirring furious debate today. He blends superb reportage with searing personal memories, presenting a probing chronicle of pot-smoking, drug-taking America from the perspective of the generation that grew up in the aftermath of the Great Stoned Age. Back then, everyone knew a drug dealer. The Last Pirate is the story of what happened to one of them, to his family, and in a pharmacological sense, to us all.            The Last Pirate is a cultural portrait of marijuana’s endless allure set against the Technicolor backdrop of South Florida in the era of Miami Vice. It’s a public saga complete with a real pirate’s booty: more than a million dollars lost, buried, or stolen—but it’s also a deeply personal pursuit, the product of a son’s determination to replant the family tree in richer soil.

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“Looking to cast light on a lost age of outlaw heroics, NBC News senior writer Dokoupil digs into the adventures of a major drug smuggler of the 1970s and ’80s: his father…While the author does show how the drug culture has grown up and settled down, his father’s story and his own outshine the large-picture history and bring it up close and personal, with humor, sensitivity, and a keen eye for the surprising detail.”

— Kirkus Reviews