Customer Reviews

Paperboy: Confessions of a Future Engineer

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"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

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

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.

Not only an interesting recalling the 50's, but full of thought provoking insights. They creep in on the story and all of a sudden you realize you have read something deeper than throwing a paper across a lawn.