The Brothers Bulger: How They Terrorized and Corrupted Boston for a Quarter Century - Hardcover

Carr, Howie

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0446576514 ISBN 13: 9780446576512

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing, 2006

Synopsis

The riveting New York Times bestseller by award-winning columnist Howie Carr--now with a stunning new afterword detailing Whitey Bulger's capture.

For years their familiar story was of two siblings who took different paths out of South Boston: William "Billy" Bulger, former president of the Massachusetts State Senate; and his brother James "Whitey" Bulger, a vicious criminal who became the FBI's second most-wanted man after Osama Bin Laden. While Billy cavorted with the state's blue bloods to become a powerful political force, Whitey blazed a murderous trail to the top rung of organized crime. Now, in this compelling narrative, Carr uncovers a sinister world of FBI turncoats, alliances between various branches of organized crime, St. Patrick's Day shenanigans, political infighting, and the complex relationship between two brothers who were at one time kings.

As the film Black Mass, starring Johnny Depp as Whitey Bulger, hits theaters, take a deeper dive into the story of the Bulgers, and their fifty-year reign over Boston with Howie Carr's The Brother's Bulger.

About this title

About the Author

Howie Carr is the author of two New York Times bestsellers, The Brothers Bulger and Hitman. Before Bulger fled in 1994, Carr was such an implacable foe of the serial killing gangster that Whitey tried to kill him as he left his house in suburban Boston -- an incident reported in 2006 on 60 Minutes. Whitey's younger brother, Billy Bulger, then the president of the Mass. State Senate, publicly referred to Carr as "the savage." Carr is also the host of daily syndicated four-hour radio program heard throughout New England, and is a member of the national Radio Hall of Fame in Chicago. He won a National Magazine Award in 1985 for Essays & Criticism in Boston Magazine.

Reviews

Although superior to some other tellings of the incredible story of how two brothers came to dominate Boston's political and criminal underworlds for decades, this account by veteran Boston Herald reporter Carr still falls short of being the definitive version he intended. The stranger-than-fiction rise to power of Billy Bulger, the longtime Massachusetts senate president, kingmaker and consummate deal maker, and his brother Whitey, a psychopathic killer who took over the city's Irish mobs, is compelling, but despite Carr's closeness to the story, he fails to bring his protagonists' inner world to life. For those broadly familiar with the corruption scandal that indelibly tarred the FBI because of the active role some of its agents took in protecting Whitey and enabling his brutalities, the author gives a detailed, hit-by-hit description of his crimes. Most readers from outside the Bay State will be almost as appalled at the wheeling and dealing of his "respectable" brother, who crossed path with presidents and presidential aspirants, and who extended his patronage practices to his subsequent position as president of the University of Massachusetts. (Feb. 23)
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Edition details

• Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0446576514
• ISBN 13: 9780446576512
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352