New books at the Havre-Hill County Library
by Havre-Hill County Library Staff
Following are some of the newest titles at Havre-Hill County Library.
New fiction “Whereabouts” by Jhumpa Lahiri. This Pulitzer Prize-winning author’s first new novel in nearly a decade follows a year in the life of an unnamed narrator in an unnamed city. Torn between stasis and movement, between the need to belong and the refusal to form lasting ties, she realizes she’s lost her way. Until one day at the sea, both overwhelmed and replenished by the sun’s vital heat, her perspective will abruptly change.
7:48 am
Dirty Gold tells the incredible story of “the three amigos”– Miami businessmen who smuggled billions of dollars in gold from South America.
I spoke recently with the book’s authors, an award-winning team of current and former reporters from the
Miami Herald.
As the
Miami Herald’s federal courts reporter, I (Jay Weaver) came across sensational criminal stories with money laundering angles all the time. But nothing compared to the gold-smuggling network between South America and Miami.
When the $3.6 billion NTR Metals money laundering case was filed in Miami federal court in 2017, I was struck not only by the dollar signs but also the vast gold-smuggling operation behind it. Then, upon further reporting, I learned that South American drug traffickers dominated the illegal gold trade in the Amazon region. Once I established that foundation, I knew this was not your garden-variety money laundering story.
Hodder & Stoughton, pp.384, 14.99
Deep in Peru’s Amazon rainforest sits a desolate zone, stretching for miles and pockmarked with chemical-tainted water that glistens orange and blue. This was the centre of the country’s illegal gold-mining operations, where tens of thousands of desperate people dug into the soil in search of a precious mineral that could make the difference between destitution and wealth. For every ounce found in the crime-infested badlands, nine tonnes of toxic waste are thought to be left behind in an environmental catastrophe that will contaminate the region for decades.
No wonder Pope Francis, on a visit to the impoverished area, called gold ‘a false god’ when so much wreckage is left behind in its wake. Yet one tonne of this illegal metal left the nation each day, an informant told an amazed investigator almost a decade ago the weight of a male walrus and worth about $40 million. Much of it was used to wash drug money for local gangsters, laundered
Book Review: Dirty Gold
A team of reporters unveils a real-life tale of greed, glamour, and a trail of destruction. PublicAffairs
For the Incas, gold was sacred. It had no material value, but represented the blood of their sun god, Viracocha. The Inca empire disappeared centuries ago, and gold has become the epitome of material wealth, attracting illicit players that leave behind a trail of violence and pollution. As we learn in
Dirty Gold, smuggling of the precious metal has been an open secret in Latin America, with illegal shipments leaving the region and traded by foreign companies ‑ at the expense of local communities and the environment.