How Cocaine Took Over the World

The Candy Machine

Cutting through the myths about the white market, Tome Feiling's The Candy Machine is the story of cocaine as it's never been told before.Gabrielle unwinds at weekends with a line of coke - and also works for a major police force. Juan Pablo is a drugs mule in Bogotá who gets his stash from a sweathouse. Belica started picking coca when she was eleven. Kurt Schmoke, former mayor of Baltimore, thinks legalization's the only way ... 
 
 Cocaine is big business. Governments spend millions on an unwinnable war against it, yet it's now the drug of choice in the West. How did the cocaine economy get so huge? Who keeps it running behind the scenes? 
 
 In The Candy Machine Tom Feiling travels the trade routes from Colombia via Miami, Kingston and Tijuana to London and New York. He meets Medellín hitmen, US kingpins, British crack users and Brazilian traffickers, and talks to the soldiers and narcotics officers who fight the gangs. 
 
 'An important study of the cultivation, usage and suppression of cocaine' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;Financial Times 
 
 'The Candy Machine is highly addictive' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;Metro 
 
 'It is hard to decide if Tom Feiling's future lies as a QC or the new Paul Theroux. A vivid, argumentative, arresting book' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;Sunday Telegraph 
 
 'I've read a few documentary accounts of the rise of cocaine, and this might be the best of them' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;Evening Standard 
 
 Tom Feiling is an award-winning documentary film-maker. He spent a year living and working in Colombia before making Resistencia: Hip-Hop in Colombia, which won numerous awards at film festivals around the world, and was broadcast in four countries. In 2003 he became Campaigns Director for the TUC's Justice for Colombia campaign, which organizes for human rights in Colombia. His book Short Walks from Bogotá: Journeys in the new Colombia is published by Allen Lane.

The Candy Machine is highly addictive

It is hard to decide if Tom Feiling's future lies as a QC or the new Paul Theroux. He has written a vivid, argumentative, arresting book

I've read a few documentary accounts of the rise of cocaine, and this might be the best of them. It's clear, sharp and solid. Very well told

An important study of the cultivation, usage and suppression of cocaine

A cracking read . . . Strong stuff, beautifully argued

Tom Feiling is an award-winning documentary film-maker. He spent a year living and working in Colombia before making Resistencia: Hip-Hop in Colombia, which won numerous awards at film festivals around the world, and was broadcast in four countries. In 2003 he became Campaigns Director for the TUC's Justice for Colombia campaign, which organizes for human rights in Colombia. This is his first book.

Cocaine is big business and getting bigger. Governments spend millions on an unwinnable war against it, yet it's now the drug of choice in the West. How did the cocaine economy get so huge? Who keeps it running behind the scenes? 
 
In The Candy Machine Tom Feiling travels the trade routes from Colombia via Miami, Kingston and Tijuana to London and New York. He meets Medillin hitmen, US kingpins, Brazilian traffickers, and talks to soldiers and narcotics officers who fight the gangs and cartels. He traces cocaine's progress from legal 'pick-me-up' to luxury product to global commodity, looks at legalization programmes in countries such as Switzerland, and shows how America's anti-drugs crusade is actually increasing demand. 
 
Cutting through the myths about the white market, this is the story of cocaine as it's never been told before.

A Journey to the Future

Alone in Japan

It is hard to decide if Tom Feiling's future lies as a QC or the new Paul Theroux. He has written a vivid, argumentative, arresting book

Feiling is a brilliant reporter, lucid, unflinching, morally engaged, and with an occasional deadpan sense of humour

The best British travel writers like Norman Lewis or Bruce Chatwin give the reader more than simple travellers' tales. Feiling is of their company ... a brilliant, penetrating and highly readable account

I've read a few documentary accounts of the rise of cocaine, and this might be the best of them. It's clear, sharp and solid. Very well told

Tom Feiling is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and writer. His celebrated books include The Candy Machine: How Cocaine Took over the World and short Walks from Bogotá: Journeys in the New Columbia. He has spent the past five years living and working in Japan.

No sex. No kids. No future? 
 
When Tom Feiling moved to Tokyo as a student in the early nineties, Japan was a beacon of the future: a rising superpower, a technology giant, a global symbol of prosperity, civility and success. When he returned twenty-four years later, the country was still a sign of things to come&mdash;but, he began to realize, it was no longer a beacon. It was a warning. 
 
This is a unique account of contemporary Japan, which travels from the quiet of its furthest flung villages to the aspiration and dynamism of its cities. It tells the story of how, from the mid-seventies onwards, Japanese society unknowingly embarked on a vast, silent process of transformation that is still unfolding today. It is still peaceful; it is still prosperous. But the Japanese population is dwindling at an alarming rate. As things stand, Japan&rsquo;s populace will shrink by a third with each new generation; by 2070 it will have lost the equivalent of the entire population outside of Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya. 
 
Travelling through shrines and bars, rice fields and mango farms, coffee shops and old peoples&rsquo; homes, Feiling meets with those affected by, and driving, this transformation. Through countless interviews and extensive research, he weaves together a powerful account of how and why men and women are ceasing to pair off and have kids. He reveals how sexual appetites and behaviours are both shaped by, and reshaping the evolving economy, and he considers both the dangers and the opportunities of the rise in solo living in Japan&mdash;and beyond. 
 
For although this is a Japanese story, it will soon be playing out all around the world. A low birth rate, an ageing society, and a shrinking population are visible everywhere from Spain to South Korea. Japan is simply further down the line. So this really is a journey to the future: sex robots and herbivorous men are now Japanese phenomena, but they may soon be coming for us all.

Tom Feiling

Creates a portrait of Colombia that is perceptive, unsensational, and full of humanity ... Feiling is a brilliant reporter, lucid, unflinching, morally engaged, and with an occasional deadpan sense of humour .. one of the most consistently intelligent and compelling books to have appeared on any South American country in recent years

Tom Feiling takes us on an enlightening journey through a changing country that few understand

A deeply political account of one man's journey to the violent heart of modern, rural, Colombia ... a must read

Feiling... venture[s] into areas that have been off limits for decades ... the sense of a vibrant nation worth discovering peeks out

The best British travel writers like Norman Lewis or Bruce Chatwin give the reader more than simple travellers' tales. Feiling is of their company ... a brilliant, penetrating and highly readable account

Some of the best insights in the book come from the people Feiling meets, and memorably portrays ... a well-written, thoughtful book

Elegantly written and knowledgeable. Feiling writes with the eye of a seasoned journalist and the style of a travel writer

Tom Feiling

Praise for Short Walks from Bogotá

Books of the Year 2012

Creates a portrait of Colombia that is perceptive, unsensational, and full of humanity ... Feiling is a brilliant reporter, lucid, unflinching, morally engaged, and with an occasional deadpan sense of humour .. one ...

Tom Feiling takes us on an enlightening journey through a changing country that few understand

Books of the Year 2012

Creates a portrait of Colombia that is perceptive, unsensational, and full of humanity ... Feiling is a brilliant reporter, lucid, unflinching, morally engaged, and with an occasional deadpan sense of humour .. one ...

Tom Feiling takes us on an enlightening journey through a changing country that few understand

Books of the Year 2012

Creates a portrait of Colombia that is perceptive, unsensational, and full of humanity ... Feiling is a brilliant reporter, lucid, unflinching, morally engaged, and with an occasional deadpan sense of humour .. one ...

Tom Feiling takes us on an enlightening journey through a changing country that few understand

Books by Tom Feiling

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