Cornbread Mafia: A Homegrown Syndicate's Code Of Silence And The Biggest Marijuana Bust In American History - Hardcover

Higdon, James

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0762778237 ISBN 13: 9780762778232

Publisher: Lyons Press, 2012

Synopsis

The true story of the largest homegrown marijuana syndicate in American history, a band of Kentucky farmers descended from Prohibition-era moonshiners versus the War on Drugs.

About this title

About the Author

James Higdon has been following the story of Johnny Boone since his adolescence growing up in Lebanon, Kentucky, during the height of the war between the Marion County marijuana growers and the federal government. From there, he went on to study writing at Brown and journalism at Columbia, where he graduated with honors in 2005. He has met with and personally interviewed Johnny Boone, Jimmy Bickett, and several other major players who have never spoken publicly until now.
     He has worked for the Courier-Journal in Louisville, the New York Times, PBS Frontline's Tehran Bureau; contributed material to The Prairie Home Companion; and researched the NYPD for the police drama series NYC-22.  His reporting relationship with Johnny Boone landed him in the crosshairs of a federal manhunt, making him the first journalist subpoenaed by the Obama administration. Due to the confidentiality rules of the federal grand jury, he had to tamp down newsgathering from NPR, Fox News, the Courier-Journal and The Hill. Now that the subpoena is settled with the US Attorney’s office in Louisville, he is free to talk about his experiences with a national press corps eager to publicize the case of a journalist standing up for his First Amendment rights.

From the Inside Flap

In the summer of 1987, Johnny Boone set out to grow and harvest one of the greatest outdoor marijuana crops in modern times. In doing so, he set into motion a series of events that defined him and his associates as the largest homegrown marijuana syndicate in American history, also known as the Cornbread Mafia.


Author James Higdon—whose relationship with Johnny Boone, currently a federal fugitive, made him the first journalist subpoenaed under the Obama administration—takes readers back to the 1970s and ’80s and the clash between federal and local law enforcement and a band of Kentucky farmers with moonshine and pride in their bloodlines. By 1989 the task force assigned to take down men like Johnny Boone had arrested sixty-nine men and one woman from busts on twenty-nine farms in ten states, and seized two hundred tons of pot. Of the seventy individuals arrested, zero talked. How it all went down is a tale of Mafia-style storylines emanating from the Bluegrass State, and populated by Vietnam veterans and weed-loving characters caught up in Tarantino-level violence and heart-breaking altruism. \


Accompanied by a soundtrack of rock-and-roll and rhythm-and-blues, this work of dogged investigative journalism and history is told by Higdon in action-packed, colorful and riveting detail.

Edition details

• Publisher: Lyons Press
• Publication date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0762778237
• ISBN 13: 9780762778232
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 400