A “lively and sprawling” (The New York Times) oral history of the New York Post and the legendary tabloid’s cultural impact from the 1970s to today as recounted by the men and women who witnessed it firsthand.
By the 1970s, the country’s oldest continuously published newspaper had fallen on hard times, just like its nearly bankrupt hometown. When the New York Post was sold to a largely unknown Australian named Rupert Murdoch in 1976, staffers hoped it would be a new beginning for the paper.
Now, after the nearly fifty years Murdoch has owned the tabloid, American culture reflects what Murdoch first started in the 1970s: a celebrity-focused, noisy, one-sided media empire that reached its zenith with Fox News.
Drawing on extensive interviews with key players and in-depth research, this eye-opening, wildly entertaining oral history shows us how we got to this point. “It’s a juicy, gonzo slice of New York history” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) full of bad behavior, inflated egos, and a corporate culture that rewarded skirting the rules and breaking norms. But working there was never boring and now, you can discover the entire remarkable true story of America’s favorite tabloid newspaper.
“[A] lively and sprawling new book. . . . Fistfights, drug deals, sex in stairwells, debauched Christmas parties and memories of mobbed-up employees are recounted. . . . [C]atnip if you are a writer, editor or journalism nut.”
—Dwight Garner, The New York Times
“An insightful, funny, thoughtful, sad and relentlessly engaging look at a paper, a city, a profession and its participants.”
—Society of Professional Journalists
“If you have as good a time reading this newspaper as we have writing for it, you’ll eat up every word of Paper of Wreckage. It’s a rollicking read.”
—Mike Vaccaro, The New York Post
“Paper of Wreckage vividly captures the New York Post’s bawdy, brash, bare-knuckled journalism. It’s The Front Page meets Animal House.”
—Jeannette Walls, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Glass Castle
