The Brothers Bulger

A portrait of two kids from South Boston who grew up to control a state: Whitey, in his position as Boston's most feared mobster, and Billy, from his gavel-wielding bastion in the Massachusetts State Senate. Eventually, Whitey becomes the FBI's second most wanted man behind Osama Bin Laden but Billy, though his influence put even presidents and governors at his beck and call, would eventually resign the Senate and take over the presidency of the University of Massachusetts. To those on the outside the storyline has always been the same: Whitey, 'the bad son', blazes a murderous trail to the top rung of the organized crime ladder and eventually goes on the lam; Billy, 'the good son', embraces the value of education, studies the classics and uses his mastery of the state's political machine to effect positive change in people's lives. This book shows that the real story is far more complex and that the brothers enjoyed an unholy and destructive alliance for decades, working both sides of Boston's Street of Power: political corruption and deadly force.

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.