Paperboy: Confessions of a Future Engineer [Paperback]

Henry Petroski (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 8, 2003

Anyone wondering what sort of experience prepares one for a future as an engineer may be surprised to learn that it includes delivering newspapers. But as Henry Petroski recounts his youth in 1950s Queens, New York–a borough of handball games and inexplicably numbered streets–he winningly shows how his after-school job amounted to a prep course in practical engineering.

Petroksi’s paper was The Long Island Press, whose headlines ran to COP SAVES OLD WOMAN FROM THUG and DiMAG SAYS BUMS CAN’T WIN SERIES. Folding it into a tube suitable for throwing was an exercise in post-Euclidean geometry. Maintaining a Schwinn revealed volumes about mechanics. Reading Paperboy, we also learn about the hazing rituals of its namesakes, the aesthetics of kitchen appliances, and the delicate art of penny-pitching. With gratifying reflections on these and other lessons of a bygone era–lessons about diligence, labor, and community-mindedness–Paperboy is a piece of Americana to cherish and reread.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Petroski wrote this charming memoir while on sabbatical from Duke University (where he is chair of the civil engineering department) to show how being a paperboy "prepared [him] for becoming an engineering student and, ultimately, an engineer." The book focuses on his adolescent years from 1954 to 1958, following the family's move on his 12th birthday from Brooklyn to Cambria Heights, Queens. Petroski (The Evolution of Useful Things) was given a bicycle for that birthday and shortly thereafter acquired a paper route. He maintained the route for four years, as he moved from grammar school to high school and broadened his interests into girls, reading, machines, etc., and along the way learned about life as only adolescents can. The writing is Petroski at his best: clear, flowing, interesting, and fun. Readers get a glimpse of life in the 1950s, with delightful details, for example, on train sets, bicycles, street layouts, newspapers, and bingo, none of which slows down the story as readers are drawn into the Petroski family. Highly recommended for all collections. Michael D. Cramer, Schwarz BioSciences, Raleigh, NC
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

In the early 1950s, 12-year-old Petroski's move from Brooklyn to Queens meant a shift from city to suburban life. On his first day in his new Cambria Heights neighborhood at the edge of Queens, the last outpost before one encountered Manhattan, Petroski received a birthday present that figured heavily in his life--a bike. The author's fascination with his bike's construction foreshadowed his engineering future, and the freedom it brought enabled him to get a job delivering the Long Island Press, providing him with income, camaraderie with the Press boys, and a sense of purpose. Petroski tells of his coming-of-age largely through vignettes about his paper route, highlighting significant world events as they appeared in the paper and explaining how this experience (and others) led him to take the path in life he did. Though he occasionally bogs the story down with too much detail, Petroski (a popular science writer whose works include Remaking the World, 1997) offers a charming account of adolescence in a much different era. Beth Warrell
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Vintage (April 8, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375718982
• ISBN-13: 978-0375718984
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.8 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.3 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,215,663 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Henry Petroski is the Aleksandar S. Vesic Professor of Civil Engineering and a professor of history at Duke University. The author of more than a dozen previous books, he lives in Durham, North Carolina, and Arrowsic, Maine.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars another winner by Henry Petroski, May 26, 2002

By 

Lawrence W. Prichard "lj-and-me" (Kent, OH, United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Paperboy: Confessions of a Future Engineer (Hardcover)

"Paperboy", by Henry Petroski is another one of his intelligent, friendly, winning books.Petroski, of "The Pencil", and "The Evolution of Useful Things,"wrote about his family's move from the city to the suburbs in the 1950s.However, there's more- how he had difficulty finding a place in a school that would provide him with the challenge and stimulation he needed, the comfort of family, the joy of friendship, and the challenges of the physical world.Petroski is one of the great scientist=writers, like Lewis Thomas, Primo Levi, and Stephen Jay Gould. However, Petroski is a mapper of the world of bridges, buildings, and the one who ddeply notices pencils, paperclips. and how to fold a newspaper.This is a good book, and would be a great book for many men- Father's day, birthdays, high school graduations--And, a great gift for women, too

4.0 out of 5 stars An inquisitive intellect - from paperboy to engineer, October 3, 2010

By 

Timothy J. Bazzett "ReedCityBoy" (Reed City, MI USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Paperboy: Confessions of a Future Engineer (Hardcover)

I learned of this book while paging through a coffee table sized book which contained all the bookcover art of an artist named Chip Kidd. I love memoirs, so I followed up on this one, and I'm glad I did. Because although I was never a paperboy, I did grow up in a largely Catholic neighborhood in about the same era that Henry Petroski did. He grew up in a Long Island suburb, while I was a small-town Midwest boy. But the experiences were comparable - the catholic education. Mine stopped after 9th grade when I went to public school, but Petroski's continued through high school. Truthfully, though, we were quite different. I was a dreamy kind of kid drawn more toward books and literature, while Henry, growing up in a house nearly devoid of books, was more interested in math and the sciences and was of a more analytic bent than I ever was. He liked to know how things were put together and how they worked, what made things run - that budding engineer in him. It was only later on, in high school that he became more aware of books and the worlds they could open to him. His scientific, analytical mindset is clearly reflected in the way he writes. Every process he describes is broken down into its particular steps; every object into its various parts. There's almost an obsessive turn in this minute attention to detail in Petroski's writing. But it was his descriptions of his parents, his aunt and uncle, and his relationship with his younger brother that intrigued me the most, as well as his stories of experimenting with smoking and drinking with his friends as he got into his teens. You got the impression that Henry wasn't really rebelling; he was just trying things on, in much the same way he experimented with modifying his bicycle or dismantling his mother's electric fry pan to find out what made the light come on. Because the overriding impression one is left with after reading Paperboy, is that Henry Petroski was basically a "good boy," that all that Catholic indoctrination "took," so to speak. And although he talks of earning average grades and being a rather indifferent student, you also get clear glimpses of a very intelligent and inquisitive mind and intellect. And you get to know a "good man" in reading this detailed story of an adolescence. Oh yeah, and you also get perhaps the most detailed and extended look at the life (four years) of a dedicated "paperboy" that you're ever likely to encounter in modern literature. I think I was a bit puzzled about why there wasn't much in here about girls, but then I realized he went to an all-boys high school. Poor guy. But no matter. I enjoyed Henry's story immensely. I felt almost like we went to different schools together. - Tim Bazzett, author of BOOKLOVER

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Local Recollections, November 23, 2006

By 

W. Holubowich - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Paperboy: Confessions of a Future Engineer (Hardcover)

This is a great compilation of memories for anyone who grew up in Cambria Heights in the 1950s/1960s. From the stores on Linden Boulevard to the nuns at Sacred Heart School, to the kids in the neighborhood it will bring back memories of a time and place once enjoyed and long forgotten.