Malcolm Beith is a 46-year-old British-American freelance journalist and the author of The Last Narco, a book about the Mexican drug war, which has been published in seven languages worldwide. He writes regularly for Small Wars Journal, Newsweek's foreign language editions, and Jane's Intelligence Review. He has written for Newsweek (with whom he was an editor from 2000 to 2007) Slate.com, Foreign Policy, The Sunday Times, Jane's Intelligence Weekly and Review, FDI magazine, The Sun, World Politics Review, Soldier of Fortune, The News (Mexico City) High Times and Nogales International.
Beith has provided commentary on the drug war for CNN, MSNBC, NPR, the BBC, The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Christian Science Monitor, AOL News, CTV (Canada), Xinhua (China), El Universal and Reforma (Mexico) and several other publications and major news outlets.
Beith can be reached for requests for commentary/talks on the Mexican drug war at mbeithpublic@gmail.com or through his U.S. publisher, Grove Atlantic (http://www.groveatlantic.com/) or UK publisher, Penguin. (http://www.penguin.co.uk)
Some reviews of The Last Narco:
"The Last Narco gracefully captures the heroic struggle of those who dare to stand up to the cartels, and the ways those cartels have tragically corrupted every aspect of Mexican law enforcement." - Laura Bickford, producer, Traffic
"Brave and honest... as reliable a guide as you are likely to get to the cross-currents of the drug war."
- The Economist
"Malcolm Beith gives clarity and light to an area almost impossible to decode." -- Eduardo Medina Mora, former Attorney General of Mexico
"A deeply sourced, widely-reported and profoundly disturbing saga of an entire nation at war with itself." -- Nicholas Schou, journalist and author of Kill the Messenger
"An excellent look at [Mexico's] monstrous cartels… [Beith] is a journalist first: his opinions are, for the most part, kept to himself. [He] tracks Guzmán’s career – his loves, his rivals, his victims – from the early days... Beith’s book ends with an open ellipsis, as El Chapo remains on the run. The only real fault is the title, because the chance that El Chapo is indeed ‘the last narco’ seems little more than wishful thinking." – London Literary Review
"A virtual nonstop chase." -- The Albuquerque Journal
"The Last Narco is a brave and terrific headlong journalistic trek into the dangerous, and immensely relevant, terrain of drug trafficking in Mexico, and the life and times of its foremost practitioner."
- Sam Quinones, author of True Tales from Another Mexico
"Malcolm Beith slaps our faces with our ignorance. We barely know Mexico, and understand even less of its major industry, drugs. In The Last Narco, he gives us a look into a place our government either denies or lies about. This time you can run, but you can't hide." - Charles Bowden, author of Murder City
"No 'war on terror' was ever as terrifying as the ferocious wars of the drug lords in Mexico. In The Last Narco, Malcolm Beith courageously takes us to the front lines in the heart of the Mexican badlands--and also right on the border of the United States. This is a threat to homeland security that is too often ignored by the press and public, and this is the book that brings it all into focus. A must read." - Christopher Dickey, author of Securing the City: Inside America's Best Counterterror Force--the NYPD
"Malcolm Beith risked life and limb to tell the inside story of Joaquín 'El Chapo' Guzmán Loera... A novelist could not have presented a more intriguing or compelling tale of corruption, intimidation, murder, blood feuds, life-and-death negotiations, and the entrepreneurial skill of a near-mythic figure... Beith's superb book corroborates the cliché that fact is stranger than fiction." - George W. Grayson, professor of government at the College of William & Mary and the author of Mexico: Narco-Violence and a Failed State?
"[The Last Narco] doesn't leave out one key moment in the life of this criminal." - Excelsior (Mexican newspaper)
"A startling account of a desperate problem boiling on and spilling over the border." - Kirkus Reviews
"Constantly gripping... its tales of cat-and-mouse games with authority provide eye-popping anecdotes on almost every page. It's like Scarface but really, really depressing - what's not to like?" - Word Magazine, UK
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