Paperboy: Confessions of a Future Engineer

By Henry Petroski

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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Dec 18, 2007
• ISBN: 9780307427205

Reviews for Paperboy

[sandydog1_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

An interesting memoir of the halcyon days of growing up in the 50s. Petroski was bit heavy on the inserting, folding, balancing, tossing of the daily paper, but otherwise it was an enjoyable read. I'm looking forward to reading some of his more "meaty', popular books about Engineering.

[newsieq · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Paperboy is an extraordinary memoir of a boyhood in a New York City neighborhood during the 1950s. What makes Paperboy extraordinary is that the life the author describes is so NORMAL. No hidden abuse, no dysfunctional parents, no drug abuse (just beer and nicotine), no angst, no unrequited love. Years ago, I read the author’s The Pencil, and found in Paperboy the same straightforward writing, the subtle humor, the lack of both verbosity and pomposity. It reads like a breeze and, unlike many memoirs, left me actually liking the subject and recognizing pieces of him in real people I know. And what makes Paperboy so amazing, to me, is that the author’s an engineer. I have known, worked for and taught engineers -- and have found many of them dreary and calculating souls , humorless and not much fun to be around. Henry Petroski comes across just the opposite. Paperboy was a most enjoyable glimpse at life in the 1950s, made even more interesting by the author’s focusing on his paper route as the pivot point, and filling his story with sensory detail that makes the his life and the era come alive.

[timbazzett · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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.