Nick Bilton

Astonishingly well-researched ... sharp and bright ... the definitive account of the Silk Road saga

You’ll never forget Bilton’s portrait of the brilliant and brazen Ross Ulbricht, even after you sacrifice sleep in a sprint to the final pages and to see justice served.

BRAD STONE, author of The Everything Store and The Upstarts

Nick Bilton has issued a fantastic modern true-crime thriller. The book moves at a stunning pace while packed full of exquisite reporting and detail. It delivers a vivid pic­ture of what happens when genius, ambition, and depravity collide, as well as a study on the complex interplay between good and evil.

Engrossing, addictive, suspenseful, riveting—this book hooked me on page one and I could not put it down. American Kingpin is the best thing I’ve read in ages. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

I dare you not to read this book in one sitting. Masterfully reported and written, Bilton’s book drops you hard into the dark heart of the most famous Internet crime to date. A first-rate thrill.

JOSHUA COOPER RAMO, author of The Seventh Sense

In American Kingpin, Nick Bilton again proves why he’s one of tech’s best storytellers with a stunningly researched and very scary portrait of the creator of a marketplace gone mad, and the oddly uncoordinated officers who took him down.

STEVEN LEVY, author of Hackers and In the Plex

A rollicking, deftly reported tale of the Dark Web. I couldn’t put it down.

CLIVE THOMPSON, author of Smarter Than You Think

Bilton’s investigation of the Silk Road is dramatic and, at times, nearly unbelievable. It puts your favourite thriller novels to shame.

STEVEN PRESSFIELD, author of Gates of Fire

Nick Bilton is the only writer who could tell this suspenseful story. American Kingpin is engrossing at every turn, right up to its pulse-racing ending.

American Kingpin is both a staggering feat of investigative journalism and a triumph of edge-of-your-seat storytelling. This is what true-crime writing should be.

Catching the Billion-Dollar Baron of the Dark Web

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER 
 
The unbelievable true story of the man now pardoned by President Trump 
 
 
In 2011, a twenty-six-year-old programmer named Ross Ulbricht launched the ultimate free market: the Silk Road, a clandestine Web site hosted on the Dark Web where anyone could trade anything – drugs, hacking software, forged passports, counterfeit cash, poisons – free of the government’s watchful eye. While the federal government were undertaking an epic two-year manhunt for the site’s elusive proprietor, the Silk Road quickly ballooned into a $1.2 billion enterprise. 
 
Ross embraced his new role as kingpin, taking drastic steps to protect himself – including ordering a hit on a former employee. As Ross made plans to disappear forever, the Feds raced against the clock to catch a man they weren’t sure even existed, searching for a needle in the haystack of the global Internet. 
 
Drawing on exclusive access to key players and two billion digital words and images Ross left behind, New York Times bestselling author Nick Bilton offers a tale filled with twists and turns, lucky breaks and unbelievable close calls. It’s a story of the boy next door’s ambition gone criminal, spurred on by the clash between the new world of libertarian-leaning, anonymous, decentralised Web advocates and the old world of government control, order and the rule of law.

Nick Bilton

Praise for American Kingpin

Unbelievably riveting

Addictive reading

Impressive

Unbelievably riveting

Addictive reading

Impressive

Unbelievably riveting

Addictive reading

Impressive

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