The Last Wild Men of Borneo - Carl Hoffman

The Last Wild Men of Borneo by Carl Hoffman was a good book about travel, adventure, and two people whose lives were wildly different than most.

Hoffman recounts tales from the lives of Swiss vagabond Bruno Manser, who spent years living with members of the Penan tribe in the jungles of Borneo, and American Michael Palmieri, who relocated to Bali and became a prolific trader in Indonesian art and antiquities, with many of the pieces acquired by him during long stretches of time spent in Borneo. It's noted in the book that the two men only met once, but their stories definitely shared the common thread of swashbuckling men craving original experiences and connecting greatly with the culture of the region and it's people.

Manser first went into the rain forest in Borneo in 1984 at the age of 30, leaving behind his life as a shepherd in the Alps to go make contact with the isolated Penan tribe that he had read about. When he went in, there were around 7,000 Penan, with many of them nomadic and peaceful hunter-gatherers who lived in groups of 20-40, and Manser was fascinated by how they lived in harmony with nature. While he was with the Penan, their lands became more and more encroached upon by logging, and Manser tried to publicize their plight and help maintain their way of life, with this effort becoming a huge part of his identity.

The other story told was that of American Michael Palmieri, someone who left his country to avoid the Vietnam War and lived a globe-trotting, wheeling and dealing life until finding a home in Bali in the 1970s. From this home base, he purchased sculptures and other artwork he sold into private collections or museums worldwide, with the art symbolic of a way of life, a connection with the wild and untouched as well as mystical and spiritual.

The book is an interesting read that tells the story of both these two men and of the region and it's people through Manser and Palmieri and concludes with Hoffman writing of spending time with one of the rapidly diminishing number of Penan families living freely in the jungle and off the land with their loved ones.

American Kingpin by Nick Bilton

American Kingpin by Nick Bilton was an entertaining book about Ross Ulbricht, who went by the name the Dread Pirate Roberts on The Silk Road, a website he founded and ran to sell almost any illegal item, in particular any illegal drug.

There were remarkable characters painted richly in the book, from Ulbricht to his mentor in growing the site, a man who went by the name Variety Jones, to the law enforcement agents after him, including Jared Der-Yeghiayan from Customs and Border Protection, Chris Tarbell from the FBI, and Gary Alford from the IRS.

Ulbricht as a college student became a Libertarian, someone who believes the government should stay out of people's personal lives, and if they want to put something into their bodies, that's up to them. He was then living in Texas and started working on building The Silk Road in 2010, launching it in January 2011, first selling on it his homegrown magic mushrooms, and very shortly after, drugs sold by others.

The site used a combination of the Tor web browser, on which someone's online activity couldn't be tracked, and people paying with untraceable Bitcoin, and after a June 2011 article written about the site by Adrian Chen for Gawker, things picked up dramatically, both in terms of activity on the site and law enforcement interest in stopping it. The opening of the book featured Customs Agent Der-Yeghiayan in October 2011 being alerted to a single ecstasy pill being mailed from the Netherlands to someone in the US. and by the beginning of 2012, Ulbricht was making some $10K a day in commissions from the site, with it eventually becoming a $1.2B business. Ulbricht as the Dread Pirate Roberts both frequently payed extortion demands from people hacking into the site and contracted for murders, which may or may not have ever been done, against people threatening his business.

Ulbricht moved to San Francisco in summer 2012 and in May 2013, IRS Agent Alford found an old drug forum post mentioning The Silk Road the week it opened, and then from the forum learned that the post had been written by someone whose account registration noted a RossUlbricht@gmail address. Then in July 2013 there was a group of fake IDs that Ross had ordered and were intercepted at SFO, with Alford learning of this flag on Ulbricht's name and this along with the forum post and a couple of additional pieces of digital footprint evidence convinced authorities they had found the Dread Pirate Roberts. Ulbricht was arrested in San Francisco in October 2013, found guilty of all charges brought against him and in May 2015 sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole.