Leaving Story Avenue - My journey from the projects to the front page [Paperback]

Paul LaRosa (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 18, 2012

Emmy-Award winning CBS News producer Paul LaRosa's  evocative memoir of his days growing up in a Bronx housing project and working as a reporter at The New York Daily News in the late 1970s.

Paul was a clueless kid growing up in a Bronx housing project when he discovered there might be more to life. As the projects went from idyllic to dangerous, Paul made his way to The New York Daily News where he became a copyboy and later a reporter.

The News was still the largest circulating newspaper in the country but it was in the last, outrageous and often hilarious, gasp of The Front Page era. Reporters wallowed in a swirl of alcohol, hookers and bad behavior but none of it stopped them from delivering an electric and engaging paper every day. Paul, an innocent trapped in a Tabloid World, quickly adapted.

As a reporter, Paul had a front row seat to one of the most harrowing five-year periods in New York City history: the city s brush with bankruptcy, the terror reign of Son of Sam, the blackout riots, and the murder of John Lennon. Read what it was like to be in the center of it all.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"I was hooked from the first chapter of Leaving Story Avenue by Paul LaRosa. The chapter is a very nearly a poem about newsrooms in the days before computers....it's a memoir most anyone will love." - Carolyn Howard-Johnson, writer and instructor at the UCLA Extension Writers' Program. 

"Paul LaRosa['s]...breezy memoir of the 1970s New York City newspaper culture, 'Leaving Story Avenue,' captures the sense of adventure behind kitschy tabloid headlines and clichéd phrases such as 'Get Me Re-Write!'" -- James Broderick, bookpleasures.com

"CBS News producer & N.Y. Press Club member Paul LaRosa has written a riveting remembrance that's outstanding for numerous reasons: The writing, the subject matter, the manner of presentation - without an ounce of ego or an iota of self pity - and the good humor."
-- Beatrice Williams-Rude, The Constant Columnist

"You can't get much more NYC than Paul LaRosa...He has a great eye, great ear, and a great sense of self-effacing humor...'Leaving Story Avenue' is a marvelous tale of a fast-disappearing part of New York."
-- Tom Robbins, investigative journalist in residence at CUNY Graduate School of Journalism,former columnist for The Village Voice

"The 'CBS News' producer Paul LaRosa...has written a captivating and vivid memoir, which takes readers on a bumpy but exuberant ride...a charming tale of an ambitious kid whose street smarts served him well during the heyday of big-city tabloid journalism. ."
-- Sam Roberts, The New York Times

Paul LaRosa has written a poignant and funny memoir that stretches in an unstraight line from mean Bronx streets to the newsroom of the Daily News. Along the way, in snappy prose, he sprinkles wisdom about New York, the pull of peers and of family, the ambition and pride that propels a working class kid to succeed, and a portrait of the zany New York Daily News newsroom that is one part exhilaration, and one part Front Page. At the end, readers will come to miss the engaging, self-deprecating author whose book reads as breezily as a delicious tabloid newspaper. --Ken Auletta, writer & author, The New Yorker Magazine

Nostalgic, warm, and compelling...I could hear the clack of typewriter keys as I read Paul LaRosa s Leaving Story Avenue. --Theresa Weir, author of The Orchard

From the Author

The reviews -- both professional and from readers -- have been outstanding. This memoir makes the perfect gift for any relative who grew up in The Bronx back in the '60 and '70s. I hope you'll take a read and let me know what you think. I appreciate all your support.

Best,

Paul

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 346 pages
• Publisher: Park Slope Publishing; First edition (April 18, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0983796300
• ISBN-13: 978-0983796305
• Product Dimensions: 0.7 x 5.2 x 7.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (34 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,267,086 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Dear Friends,

It's hard to believe but this April (2013) marks the ten-year anniversary of the crime that shook the Pacific Northwest -- the murder-suicide involved Tacoma Police Chief David Brame and his wife Crystal.

My book on that event -- "Tacoma Confidential" -- came out a few years later and has become a classic of true crime, hailed by grand dame Ann Rule and many others. It is the definitive and only book about that horrible crime. If you have not read it, I hope you do. It's available instantly as an e-book and many paperbacks are out there and available on Amazon.

In the meantime, my memoir "Leaving Story Avenue: My journey from the projects to the front page" is now available exclusively on Kindle for the very low price of $2.99, much less than the print edition. If you do not have a Kindle or a Kindle app, well, you should get one! HAHA but the book also is available as a trade paperback.

It's a story about striving to become who you want to be and deals with the years I grew up in a Bronx housing project and how I made the leap to become a reporter at The New York Daily News when reporters were fun, full of life and sometime booze. It was a grand time. A memoir of a now lost era, the last days of the Front Page Era.

There are other recently-published memoirs out there -- like Anna Quindlen's -- but I truly believe mine is one of the most uplifting. I hope you'll read it. The book has received great reader reviews and the NY Times called it 'vivid and captivating.'

Ken Auletta, a writer & author at the New Yorker Magazine said: "Paul LaRosa
has written a poignant and funny memoir that stretches in an unstraight line from mean Bronx streets to the newsroom of the Daily News. Along the way, in snappy prose, he sprinkles wisdom about New York, the pull of peers and of family, the ambition and pride that propels a working class kid to succeed, and a portrait of the zany New York Daily News newsroom that is one part exhilaration, and one part Front Page. At the end, readers will come to miss the engaging, self-deprecating author whose book reads as breezily as a delicious tabloid newspaper."

Carolyn Howard-Johnson, writing on myshelf.com, said: "This is a memoir most anyone will love."

Thanks for taking a look.

Paul

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Mr. LaRosa, may I have your autograph? July 26, 2012

By AKA_Terrie

Format:Paperback

Disclaimer: I am not a kid from the Bronx. I did not grow up with, nor have I ever met, nor have I any affiliation with the author of this book. But...I sure wish things were different. I wish I could say I had walked half a mile in his shoes, beside him, behind him because the stories told are so good, so fun, so sweet and so memorable. As I read I found myself cheering on a group of people I'd never met, longing for a sense of the camaraderie earned while living in a neighborhood I'd never entered, wanting to keep the secrets and share the wealth, and all the while I continued to become entranced by the stories I wish I could say were my own.

I imagine the stories told here are what some of the great commentators of times past might have told, or wish they'd told, back in the day. This is the kind of work you'll remember long past the first read; a little like that of Dickens, Twain, and even Thoreau because of the ability of the author to make you think about the places he's been, the faces he's lost and the spaces in between that were survived only because of that very gritty New York attitude. Also a story of hope, I had to stop several times to wipe away tears. It's so good to see a tale of one of our own succeeding despite the twists and turns of life. Way to go, Mr. LaRosa! You may not always have done it "right" but you've done it "so" - and that's the important thing. I can't really imagine anyone not finding value in this work.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars excellent must-read August 4, 2012

By Sheila

Format:Paperback

Former newspaperman Paul LaRosa deftly chronicles his scrappy and sometimes madcap early years, revolving around a new, then declining, Bronx housing project. His childhood playing with the kids in the projects, he writes, was "world without parents," where anything felt possible. From troublemaking in Catholic school (high school starts off by getting punched in the face by a priest) to working behind the counter at a deli, LaRosa had a very New York adolescence: "The first day of Driver's Ed was only the third time I had ever been inside a car," he writes.

The book really sets afire when he gets a job as a copyboy (everyone is a copyboy, we learn, even girls) at the Daily News. In fact, that's how he describes the newspaper itself: "alive" and "on fire." From his days as a lowly copyboy to the the indignities of being the reporter assigned to the slow overnight "lobster shift," where nothing happens until he gets a call to go to the Dakota, because John Lennon had been shot, the reader feels so close to the action that they may end up with ink on their hands.

Leaving Story Avenue is a sweet and funny book, one full of curiosity and a constant sense of wonder and about the world.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Leaving story avenue November 26, 2012

By Carolyn A Walsko

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

The book gave some real insight into the N Y projects what they were meant to be and what they became
He shared how he really needed a mentor/guidance to be successful. Enjoyed what were his inner thoughts of his life struggles and accomplishments.