
Bad City
Peril and Power in the City of Angels
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Narrated by:
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Robert Petkoff
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By:
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Paul Pringle
2022 Amazon.com Best Books of the Year, Long-listed
For fans of Spotlight and Catch and Kill comes a nonfiction thriller about corruption and betrayal radiating across Los Angeles from one of the region's most powerful institutions, a riveting tale from a Pulitzer-prize winning journalist who investigated the shocking events and helped bring justice in the face of formidable odds.
On a cool, overcast afternoon in April 2016, a salacious tip arrived at the L.A. Times that reporter Paul Pringle thought should have taken, at most, a few weeks to check out: a drug overdose at a fancy hotel involving one of the University of Southern California’s shiniest stars—Dr. Carmen Puliafito, the head of the prestigious medical school. Pringle, who’d long done battle with USC and its almost impenetrable culture of silence, knew reporting the story wouldn’t be a walk in the park. USC is the largest private employer in the city of L.A., and it casts a long shadow.
But what he couldn’t have foreseen was that this tip would lead to the unveiling of not one major scandal at USC but two, wrapped in a web of crimes and cover-ups. The rot rooted out by Pringle and his colleagues at The Times would creep closer to home than they could have imagined—spilling into their own newsroom.
Packed with details never before disclosed, Pringle goes behind the scenes to reveal how he and his fellow reporters triumphed over the city’s debased institutions, in a narrative that unfolds like L.A. noir. This is L.A. at its darkest and investigative journalism at its brightest.
A Macmillan Audio production from Celadon Books.
"Robert Petkoff is especially effective at narrating this account..."—AudioFile Magazine (Earphones Award Winner)
©2022 Paul Pringle (P)2022 Macmillan AudioListeners also enjoyed...




















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I found the book riveting, especially the first half. In the second half, Pringle and his colleagues pursue additional scandals, but none is quite so riveting as the first USC scandal—not even the one that resulted in a Pulitzer Prize for Pringle.
The narration by Robert Petkoff was excellent. He had the right tone of urgency or outrage as needed.
Overall, highly recommended!
Relentless Reporting
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Is it hard to listen to this slow, careful documentation of influential institutions condoning awful, illegal behavior? Yes - especially when you live in LA. Too many professionals seem to have become very comfortable hiding crimes and putting financial interests first in this real life 21st century version of a 1940s film noir classic. Millionaires face few consequences for abusive actions and videotaped crimes while poorer, younger drug addicts spend time in jail.
The author won the Pulitzer Prize, helped rescue the local newspaper, and helped dislodge a power-obsessed university president to resign. Hundreds of sexually abused USC students also received over a billion dollars in damages. Yet a few prominent criminal suspects have also avoided even being questioned by police, let alone being charged or convicted. Is this justice? Readers may reach some depressing conclusions.
Revealing Glimpses into a City of Causal Corruption
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SO SO GOOD!!
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White Rich Men Go Down
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My only complaint was the author's decision to bring two extraneous stories into the book after completing his reports on the Puliafito scandal. Yes, they are worthy tales in and of themselves, but the digression pulls attention away from Pringle's incredible reporting that forms the main body of this book.
I graduated from J School in 1970, before computers and well before internet research. But the guts of old-fashioned reporting are here, and this story gives me hope that investigative journalism will always be with us.
I wish I had read this in J School!
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Wow! Loved it.
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riveting
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Wonderful
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Nice job Paul!
Anything else you’d recommend as mandatory reading?
Could not get any better than this
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Really Enjoyed
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