What do you think?
Rate this book
Paper Boy: Read All About It!
Howie Carr's latest book, Paper Boy, is a tell-all memoir of his life in print journalism, radio, and television. Gangster Whitey Bulger wanted him dead. Sen. Ted Kennedy tried to put his newspaper out of business. Gov. Mike Dukakis called him a "sociopath," and 60 Minutes called him a "radio hitman." The Boston Globe devoted a series to him—Poisoned Politics. Howie Carr—for more than 40 years, he has embodied "the tabloid talk-show stuff in Boston," as Whitey's brother Billy told a Congressional committee. Now for the first time Howie is telling his own story, in his own words—from the early days at Boston City Hall to hanging out at Mar-a-Lago with President Donald Trump. You’ll get a no-holds-barred account of his entire career, from City Hall to local tv news, his battles against Whitey Bulger, the Kennedys, the bow-tied bumkissers, and then finally taking ownership of his own show. Howie names names and kicks butt in his own inimitable and hilarious style. They don't make newspaper memoirs like Paper Boy anymore! "How do you know you’re doing your job as a journalist? When the Mob decides to assassinate you. Not many of us can claim that honor, but Howie Carr can—that and much more. What a life. It’s all here, and well worth reading.” -Tucker Carlson
329 pages, Paperback
Published September 1, 2023
1 person is currently reading
21 people want to read
About the author
Howie Carr
17 books44 followersHowie Carr is a columnist for the Boston Herald and hosts a radio talk show syndicated throughout New England. He is the New York Times bestselling author of the true crime biographies The Brothers Bulger and Hitman, and author of the crime novel Hard Knocks. In 1985, Carr won a National Magazine Award, and in 2008 he was elected to the National Radio Hall of Fame. He lives in suburban Boston with his wife and their three daughters.
http://us.macmillan.com/author/howiecarr
http://www.facebook.com/howiecarrshow
http://us.macmillan.com/author/howiecarr
http://www.facebook.com/howiecarrshow
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
April 19, 2024
Rumpswabs, hacks, and moonbats beware! Its Howie Carr’s autobiography!
Quite a bit of the material has been covered in more depth in Howie’s earlier books, particularly the Bulgers, the Kennedys and Trump. This autobiography takes a broader, chronological approach. It covers many smaller stories that are interesting, but don't have enough depth to warrant a book. There is more than a little score settling as Howie kicks a$$ and takes names in one paragraph after another.
This is also a sad memoir on the decline and fall of print journalism, with radio and TV following close behind. Howie lived through more than 50 years of this, from 1973 to the present, and he does an excellent job of reporting on it.
Howie fans will find this book 5 stars. Most others on the right will find it 4 stars. Most on the left would hate it, but such closed minds wouldn’t read it anyway.
Quite a bit of the material has been covered in more depth in Howie’s earlier books, particularly the Bulgers, the Kennedys and Trump. This autobiography takes a broader, chronological approach. It covers many smaller stories that are interesting, but don't have enough depth to warrant a book. There is more than a little score settling as Howie kicks a$$ and takes names in one paragraph after another.
This is also a sad memoir on the decline and fall of print journalism, with radio and TV following close behind. Howie lived through more than 50 years of this, from 1973 to the present, and he does an excellent job of reporting on it.
Howie fans will find this book 5 stars. Most others on the right will find it 4 stars. Most on the left would hate it, but such closed minds wouldn’t read it anyway.
December 24, 2023
If you like Howie Carr you will love this book. Great stories spanning his career at the Herald, Radio etc…
September 14, 2023
Howie Carr is a masterful "ink stained wretch" as he terms journalists, and this 327 page memoir breezes through with stories of his making it in the business through the rungs of print, from the Deerfield Academy paper The Scroll (his column was titled Sports Carr), through papers from Chapel Hill, North Carolina to the Boston Herald American...but not the fancy Boston Globe. Being 47 percent Irish, he wasn't allowed in the pen with the trust fund types.
His prose is in-the-know:
"I knew some people at the station didn't like me, but after you work awhile at places like City Hall or the State House, on the visiting team so to speak, a few boo birds in the cheap seats don't bother you too much."
Howie, with wit and bite that mixes Jimmy Cagney and Mephistopheles, attacks corruption and political chicanery. He calls these people the hacks, and Paper Boy is a veritable catalog of hack-a-rama worthy of Ambrose Bierce's The Devil's Dictionary. "Once you go hack you never go back," Howie warns, and he especially unloaded on the Kennedys. Patrick Kennedy, one of the lesser breed farmed out to run for office in Rhode Island, was nick-named "Patches" by Howie, and a young journalist from The Weekly Standard took Howie's tapes on Patches to make a devastating attack. The journalist was Tucker Carlson. But all Boston pols get theirs, and Howie easily enlarges his bite on the nation.
Paper Boy is a great compendium of Massachusetts politics, recalling The Last Hurrah, where, for example, Howie notes the animosity Ray Flynn brought as mayor because the upper-class Irish pols like Billy Bulger and Kevin White (the "two-toilet Irish" as they were called) thought Flynn was a ham-and-egger...a mere street pol.
A deeper, almost fatal animosity came when Howie took on Whitey Bulger, Boston mobster, murderer, and brother of the establishment pol Billy Bulger. Whitey's threat to Howie that
"we got a fresh dumpster in back just waiting for him" wasn't just talk.
The breezy, savvy prose is entertaining, with a fox-hole view of journalism, but Howie also catalogs his transfer from print to TV, radio, with all the behind the curtains fighting and jostling hacks in corporate media bestow upon their employees. Howie battled this long enough to become the independent producer he is today. That story is equally absorbing, as well as his sour views on the media. ("60 Minutes isn't journalism, it isn't even close. 60 Minutes is cheap melodrama. Democrat soap opera...you're not so much interviewed as cast, in a role.").
The last part of Paper Boy is a frank endorsement of Trump, but I think all readers, whatever their politics, will find Howie to be an avid storyteller, truth teller, and a worthy successor to the darker shadow of Mark Twain and H.L. Mencken. If you've never heard Howie on radio, you're missing a lot, and Paper Boy brings that voice unsullied and bubbling to the page. It's an exceptional read.
His prose is in-the-know:
"I knew some people at the station didn't like me, but after you work awhile at places like City Hall or the State House, on the visiting team so to speak, a few boo birds in the cheap seats don't bother you too much."
Howie, with wit and bite that mixes Jimmy Cagney and Mephistopheles, attacks corruption and political chicanery. He calls these people the hacks, and Paper Boy is a veritable catalog of hack-a-rama worthy of Ambrose Bierce's The Devil's Dictionary. "Once you go hack you never go back," Howie warns, and he especially unloaded on the Kennedys. Patrick Kennedy, one of the lesser breed farmed out to run for office in Rhode Island, was nick-named "Patches" by Howie, and a young journalist from The Weekly Standard took Howie's tapes on Patches to make a devastating attack. The journalist was Tucker Carlson. But all Boston pols get theirs, and Howie easily enlarges his bite on the nation.
Paper Boy is a great compendium of Massachusetts politics, recalling The Last Hurrah, where, for example, Howie notes the animosity Ray Flynn brought as mayor because the upper-class Irish pols like Billy Bulger and Kevin White (the "two-toilet Irish" as they were called) thought Flynn was a ham-and-egger...a mere street pol.
A deeper, almost fatal animosity came when Howie took on Whitey Bulger, Boston mobster, murderer, and brother of the establishment pol Billy Bulger. Whitey's threat to Howie that
"we got a fresh dumpster in back just waiting for him" wasn't just talk.
The breezy, savvy prose is entertaining, with a fox-hole view of journalism, but Howie also catalogs his transfer from print to TV, radio, with all the behind the curtains fighting and jostling hacks in corporate media bestow upon their employees. Howie battled this long enough to become the independent producer he is today. That story is equally absorbing, as well as his sour views on the media. ("60 Minutes isn't journalism, it isn't even close. 60 Minutes is cheap melodrama. Democrat soap opera...you're not so much interviewed as cast, in a role.").
The last part of Paper Boy is a frank endorsement of Trump, but I think all readers, whatever their politics, will find Howie to be an avid storyteller, truth teller, and a worthy successor to the darker shadow of Mark Twain and H.L. Mencken. If you've never heard Howie on radio, you're missing a lot, and Paper Boy brings that voice unsullied and bubbling to the page. It's an exceptional read.
January 7, 2024
Paper Boy proves that Howie Carr is a newspaper man, thru and thru, despite his better-known career as a radio talk show host. He had the good fortune to get a job before newspapers went into a steep decline. Crude and rude but always on point, Howie gives us a tour of the hackarama of Massachusetts politics with a smile and sneer. I knew many of these stories but still was surprised at the extent of corruption in my own State. For example, though many people knew about the Brothers Bulger (one a powerful President of the State Senate, the other crime boss), I didn't know there were several other criminal/politician families. I highly recommended it.
Still, I have my famous quibbles. Though Howie showed himself to us warts and all, the Oklahoma bombing incident was conspicuously absent. When the 1995 bombing of the Federal Courthouse took place, Howie blamed it on "towel heads" on his radio program. It was in fact, committed by domestic white terrorists. The next day Howie apologized for the remark and dedicated an hour of his show for people to call in and chew him out. I was proud of him for taking his lumps like a man, instead running from it like a hack.
Also, as a Tauntonian, I was miffed by his failure to include a certain politician.
Still, I have my famous quibbles. Though Howie showed himself to us warts and all, the Oklahoma bombing incident was conspicuously absent. When the 1995 bombing of the Federal Courthouse took place, Howie blamed it on "towel heads" on his radio program. It was in fact, committed by domestic white terrorists. The next day Howie apologized for the remark and dedicated an hour of his show for people to call in and chew him out. I was proud of him for taking his lumps like a man, instead running from it like a hack.
Also, as a Tauntonian, I was miffed by his failure to include a certain politician.
October 16, 2024
Paper Boy by Howie Carr
@howiecarrradionetwork
.
.
The memoir of Boston talk radio legend Howie Carr. The reader gets an inside look at the long spanning career of Howie, throughout his years in journalism he worked for newspapers, television and as a long standing conservative talk radio host in Boston. In this memoir Howie recounts his decades of fighting corruption at the Massachusetts state house, dealing with the gangster Bulger brothers, and shining a light on the mostly disgraceful Kennedy political dynasty. Certainly a tell all memoir where Howie names names and settles old scores in his typical humorous fashion.
.
.
#howiecarr #boston #talkradio #conservative #whiteybulger #gangster #corruption #massachusetts #bookreview #bookstagram #read #readersofinstagram
@howiecarrradionetwork
.
.
The memoir of Boston talk radio legend Howie Carr. The reader gets an inside look at the long spanning career of Howie, throughout his years in journalism he worked for newspapers, television and as a long standing conservative talk radio host in Boston. In this memoir Howie recounts his decades of fighting corruption at the Massachusetts state house, dealing with the gangster Bulger brothers, and shining a light on the mostly disgraceful Kennedy political dynasty. Certainly a tell all memoir where Howie names names and settles old scores in his typical humorous fashion.
.
.
#howiecarr #boston #talkradio #conservative #whiteybulger #gangster #corruption #massachusetts #bookreview #bookstagram #read #readersofinstagram
September 5, 2023
I just got this book on Saturday. I am loving it. I am a BIG Howie Carr fan. In my 20s and early 30s he was my GO-TO on the radio on my way home from work. Great guy. Great politics. Can't wait to finish it!
September 22, 2023
His humor is only exceeded by his cynical view of politics/media. His chapter on Albert L “The Dapper” O’Neil was touching and proves beyond any doubt, Howie, underneath the veneer, is a softie.
August 19, 2024
Some books embrace you. Some repel you. I could not get into this book.
April 6, 2025
Loved it; I could hear Howie’s voice as I was reading
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews