Books, Arts & Manners: Paper Boy

Murdoch, by William Shawcross (Simon & Schuster, 492 pp., $27.50)

Rupert Murdoch and I came to New York at the same time, and there to greet us was the Son of Sam. One of my sharpest memories of the fag-end of the summer of 1977 is of waiting for the Lexington Avenue local in the steaming evening rush hour. Abe Bearne was still mayor, the subway platforms were mosaics of black gumwads, the subway cars were swirls of psychotic graffiti. A fellow New Yorker held a copy of the newly Murdochized New York Post, reporting that David Berkowitz, the woman-stalking serial killer, had just been apprehended. The headline was about a foot tall, the letters were blood red: caught.

About the Author

Richard Brookhiser

Historian Richard Brookhiser is a senior editor of National Review and a senior fellow at the National Review Institute.

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Murdoch, by William Shawcross (Simon & Schuster, 492 pp., $27.50)

Rupert Murdoch and I came to New York at the same time, and there to greet us was the Son of Sam. One of my sharpest memories of the fag-end of the summer of 1977 is of waiting for the Lexington Avenue local in the steaming evening rush hour. Abe Bearne was still mayor, the subway platforms were mosaics of black gumwads, the subway cars were swirls of psychotic graffiti. A fellow New Yorker held a copy of the newly Murdochized New York Post, reporting that David Berkowitz, the woman-stalking serial killer, had just been apprehended. The headline was about a foot tall, the letters were blood red: caught.