10 books about James "Whitey" Bulger

He's been charged with 19 counts of murder. He's also facing assertions that he was an FBI informant before he skipped town and spent 16 years living on the lam. The trial of reputed Boston mob boss James "Whitey" Bulger is full of drama, intrigue, and tales of death and betrayal. Interested in learning more about Bulger? You're in luck. He's been written about often over the years. Here are 10 titles you might want to check out.

1. "Whitey Bulger: America's Most Wanted Gangster and the Manhunt That Brought Him to Justice," by Kevin Cullen and Shelley Murphy

Boston Globe reporters Kevin Cullen and Shelley Murphy have been covering the Bulger story for years. Their combined backgrounds allow them to delve deeply into Bulger's past an criminal career. This book explores Whitey's youthful beginnings in a life of crime, the network of family and friends that connected him to Boston establishment figures as well its underworld, the crimes that put him on the FBI's most wanted list, and the process that finally brought him to justice.

1 of 10

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.