The Brothers Bulger: How They Terrorized And Corrupted Boston For A Quarter Century (2006) - Plot & Excerpts
The Brothers Bulger chronicles the epic story of corruption, power and crime in Massachusetts through two of the most powerful people ever to come out of the Bay State: James "Whitey" Bulger and his younger brother, former President of U-Mass Amherst and the Massachusetts Senate, William "Billy" Bulger. The story stylizes and explains how Billy conquered Massachusetts politics and dominated its state landscape for 30 years; and how Whitey dominated local crime finally becoming one of the most wanted men in America.The author, local radio talk-show host Howie Carr, does a very good job detailing the scale of corruption that Billy fostered and utilized, how it seemed to suck up and encompass every relevant politician to come out of the area for thirty years. But while Carr relishes in describing the evils of Billy, he spends the majority of the book describing the murderer, Whitey Bulger. How Whitey started as a male prostitute after serving a major jail term for robbery; how he took over selling cocaine and felt rapped by the Mafia in the North End.And the book painstakingly details the roll the FBI played in making Whitey and Stevie Flemmie the two most notorious informers in crime history. From that point forward the FBI used Whitey and Flennie to take out the Mafia, and Whitey and Stevie used the FBI for protection and to rise as the most notorious gangsters in America. The book tries to parallel the two men and chronicles their meteoric rise and then spectacular falls; whitey was finally exposed and went on the lamb; how the FBI imploded in Boston admitting that their agents had, in effect, become gangsters and partnered with Whitey, and how Billy ruined his political power base in an attempt to avoid his relationship with both whitey and the FBI. The book has major flaws. Most notable is that as much as the two men were brothers and rose to power together, their power paths were so incongruous with the other that they seem to be almost totally disconnected. This disconnection makes caring about the singularity of the story very difficult.Moreover, Carr is inherently toxic and negative: everyone is corrupt and crooked; dishonest and untrustworthy; criminal and deceitful. Therefore, the book lacks a positive figure or figures to empathize with. Carr seems to do the exact opposite: he does not just dislike Whitey and Billy (in fact, he seems to almost begrudgingly respect Whitey); he seems to hate everyone he describes in the books. While gangsters and crooked FBI agents and corrupt politicians seem to deserve it, Carr has nothing but bad things to say about everyone in his books (Save one or two victims of Whitey); William Weld, Michael Dukakis, John Kerry, Barney Frank, etc : Carr paints them all with a toxic and at times bitter brush. Finally, there was a certain point where "enough was enough." There were only so many stories about Billy's corruption and graft and Whitey's murdering and crime sprees that I could take before I started to just glaze over (to say nothing of the similarities between every criminal in South Boston who all seemed to be named O'Flynn, Hallerhan, Hennessey, O'Halleran, O'Brien, O'Sullivan, etc). There was just something uninspired about the book after you got your first few tastes of murder and corruption. If you are from Boston and want to know about this family , add one star to the review; otherwise a good book that seems it could have been a little better by being a little... less.
Let's be honest here: I would not have gotten through this if I hadn't been listening to the audiobook. As an audiobook, however, it wasn't such a chore. I got my information about the Bulger brothers in 20 minute spurts while walking to the library and back home, and that broke it down to manageable chunks. It still wasn't perfect-- the editing is weird, both in the text and by the reader. The text largely has no overall coherent flow, instead jumping from one topic to another with no segue. As for the audio, the reader's voice often noticeably changes, usually at the beginning of a new chapter but not always. It's obvious that he had stopped recording, rested his voice, and then resumed, but I've yet to come across this in any other audiobooks. It was kind of annoying.Aside from the flow, the book was decent. It was obviously well-researched and, although Howie Carr doesn't even try to hide his biases, very thorough about all the brothers' dealings in the past 50+ years. Having grown up in Massachusetts and attended UMass myself, I knew a little about the Bulger brothers but not to the extent that this book covered. If you want to learn more about the two Bulgers on different sides of the law, I'd recommend this.I do wish it had been updated considering that Whitey has recently been captured and is sitting in prison [and his girlfriend, actually, is in prison in my city]. Maybe he's working on a new, updated edition. But as the audiobook is from 2006, it finishes with Whitey still at large.
What do You think about The Brothers Bulger: How They Terrorized And Corrupted Boston For A Quarter Century (2006)?
When all of the systems fail. This book is a fascinating, if not repulsive study of the lives of two brothers who controlled Boston for years. The larger question the book raises is which was worse. The brother who was ranked as the fourteenth greatest (worse) criminal of all time responsible for more murders than Dillinger and Bonnie and Clyde together. Or the State Senator who controlled the operations of state government while sustaining a great organization based on patronage while contributing to his own great wealth. Must read for students of the democratic process or the history of the American underworld. Unbelievable.
—Curt Blair
Although poorly written (there's a blizzard of names on almost every page), the story is still un-freaking-believable. The fact that the city and police in Boston could be this corrupt is truly astounding. The book centers around the speaker of the Massachusetts House, Billy Bulgar (the "corrupt midget") and his brother the drug-dealing Irish mafia kingpin, Whitey Bulgar. Whitey managed to suborn numerous local police and FBI agents (some of whom grew up in the same housing project as the Bulgers in South Boston) to participate in thefts and murder and to derail investigations. In return the corrupted officers got handouts and comfy government jobs through Whitey and Billy. The connection between the two brothers is more tenuous than Carr would like to admit, but they were both certainly involved in all sorts of illegal activity and it is suspicious how so many mafia dealers and enforcers ended up on state government payrolls that Billy Bulgar controlled.The book was gives some interesting insight into the devastation of South Boston after the busing program of 1974 and the development of a white ghetto. It also reminded me how much of contemporary politics came out of this milieux. From John McCormack (the US Speaker of the House from 61-69, who also helped Whitey Bulgar in jail), to Dukakis, to Paul Tsongas, to Mitt Romney, to Cardinal Bernard Law, to John Kerry (who got his bones prosecuting an Irish mafia pinball machine ring), Boston was and a political launch pad for Democratic careers.
—Frank Stein
This is one of those good books that's hard to recommend. It details how - well, I guess you can tell from the title. Our two villains are Billy Bulger, the politically minded brother (who gets less ink), and his criminal brother, the notorious Whitey Bulger. Most of the book is about Whitey and his astounding corruption of multiple FBI agents and his getting away with murder for dozens of years (until he finally ran out of competitors to rat out and ended up on the FBI's most wanted list). It's tough to read - the book is well researched and readable, but how corrupt the FBI was is truly stomach-turning, and this book is one of those stories where if I saw it on an episode of Law and Order, I'd be yelling "Oh, come on!" at the TV. Maybe it would have helped if there was a updated version released after Whitey was caught (spoiler alert), but as is, this is difficult to recommend unless you're prepared to be bummed.
—Nick
