Bad City: Peril and Power in the City of Angels

by Paul Pringle Narrated by Robert Petkoff

Overview

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 reads 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)

Editorial Reviews

AUGUST 2022 - AudioFile

Robert Petkoff is especially effective at narrating this account in which the author’s judgments heavily dominate the narrative. L.A. TIMES reporter Pringle’s painstaking multi-year investigation, starting in 2016, pitted him against the prestigious University of Southern California and his own editors, who did not want to run afoul of the city’s most influential advertiser—or its friends. The news story involved the married dean of USC’s Keck School of Medicine, his drug habit, and his drug-addicted 22-year-old girlfriend, whom he repeatedly sprung from rehab. Pringle’s no-holds-barred journalism is dramatic listening, and Petkoff keeps a brisk pace, maintaining suspense and narrative tension even through passages that are repetitive. Petkoff takes on the author’s gripes and ruminations, along with his passion, indignation, and abiding sense of justice—for a true-crime story as compelling as any novel. D.A.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award, 2022 Best Audiobook © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine

Publishers Weekly

07/25/2022

Los Angeles Times reporter Pringle debuts with an in-depth and often riveting account of sexual misconduct, drug abuse, corruption, and cover-ups in Southern California. Expanding on a story he broke in 2017, Pringle recounts how a Pasadena hotel manager’s dogged efforts to get someone to investigate what happened to a young woman who overdosed on crystal meth in the hotel room of Dr. Carmen Puliafito, the dean of the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine, led to Puliafito’s resignation and the uncovering of decades of sexual abuse committed by George Tyndall, a gynecologist in USC’s student health clinic. Throughout, Pringle draws detailed and sympathetic portraits of the victims in both cases, including Sarah Warren, the woman who overdosed in Puliafito’s hotel room after meeting him through the website Backpage.com and becoming his “round-the-clock sugar baby,” and recounts in meticulous detail USC’s efforts to cover up the crimes. Part of these efforts included pressuring the leadership of the Los Angeles Times to kill the Puliafito story, and Pringle doesn’t hold back in criticizing how the newspaper’s executives allowed themselves to be compromised by moneyed interests in Southern California. It’s a crisp tale of institutional rot, dogged journalism, and heroic whistleblowing. Readers will be on the edge of their seats. (July)

From the Publisher

*A New York Times Editors' Choice and "Best Book of July"*

*A Newsweek Best Book of 2022*

"Just as there is reliably a song of the summer or a must-see blockbuster, the journalism industry now has a top candidate for the media controversy of the season ... Pringle’s fast-paced book is a master class in investigative journalism... When institutions collude to protect one another, reporting may be our last best hope for accountability."

—The New York Times

"Paul Pringle’s Bad City is an earth-shattering tale of appalling institutional corruption—and the inspiring reporters who overcame shocking obstacles to bring the truth to light."

—Robert Kolker, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Hidden Valley Road and Lost Girls

"Pringle...reveals how power works in Los Angeles, a city where a new brand of film-noir corruption thrives in our tech-economy landscape. It’s a city where the privileged do everything they can to protect their friends and allies, and where small groups of insurgents work tirelessly to drag their behavior out into the light of day.... A powerful and truly original addition to the genre of investigative-journalism drama."

—The Los Angeles Times

"His book details the breathtaking twists involved in reporting out these many stories, but also lays bare the cover-ups and scandals present at his own newspaper...not unlike the NBC News debacle that Ronan Farrow revealed in his book Catch and Kill."

—The Hollywood Reporter

"Bad City, a startling tale of people looking the other way and behaving ever so badly, never lets up. It is one whopper of a true-crime story, written with an immediacy bound to win readers."

—The New York Journal of Books

"A Los Angeles noir caper come to life, Bad City grabs you from the very first sentence and doesn’t let go. A remarkable reporting achievement."

—Chris Hayes, host of All In with Chris Hayes and New York Times bestselling author of A Colony in a Nation

“A crisp tale of institutional rot, dogged journalism, and heroic whistleblowing. Readers will be on the edge of their seats.”

—Publishers Weekly

"The tip that initially made its way to The Los Angeles Times newsroom was as salacious as it gets… [Bad City] revisits the paper’s relentless reporting that followed, which uncovered an explosive scandal involving sex abuse and powerful men preying on the disadvantaged. If the book were just about that, it would already be compelling enough for news junkies who appreciate how the sausage gets made. Pringle’s book, though, adds newsroom acrimony as a layer on top of that story"

—Forbes

"The salacious tale of a major university mired in scandal…[and] the newsroom drama is as juicy as the dramas at the university… A brisk chronicle of sex, lies, and betrayal."

—Kirkus Reviews

"This tale of flagrant menace and endemic corruption is the subject of Pringle’s dazzling, irresistible new book, Bad City. In it, he has produced that rare and treasured gift for the nonfiction reader: a penetrating investigation that is also a genuine page-turner."

—Air Mail

AUGUST 2022 - AudioFile

Robert Petkoff is especially effective at narrating this account in which the author’s judgments heavily dominate the narrative. L.A. TIMES reporter Pringle’s painstaking multi-year investigation, starting in 2016, pitted him against the prestigious University of Southern California and his own editors, who did not want to run afoul of the city’s most influential advertiser—or its friends. The news story involved the married dean of USC’s Keck School of Medicine, his drug habit, and his drug-addicted 22-year-old girlfriend, whom he repeatedly sprung from rehab. Pringle’s no-holds-barred journalism is dramatic listening, and Petkoff keeps a brisk pace, maintaining suspense and narrative tension even through passages that are repetitive. Petkoff takes on the author’s gripes and ruminations, along with his passion, indignation, and abiding sense of justice—for a true-crime story as compelling as any novel. D.A.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award, 2022 Best Audiobook © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

2022-06-29
The salacious tale of a major university mired in scandal.

In 2016, Pulitzer Prize winner Pringle, a reporter for the Los Angeles Times since 2001, received a disturbing news tip: A young woman had overdosed in a Pasadena hotel, where she was staying with Dr. Carmen Puliafito, the well-known dean of the Keck Medical School at the University of Southern California. The police and fire departments arrived, and the woman was taken away, but there had been no reporting about the event, no charges filed about the drugs and paraphernalia found in the hotel room, and no information about whether the woman survived. Pringle recounts in vivid detail his monthslong investigation into the coverup and the obfuscation, stonewalling, and power dynamics that threatened to stop him. He and his colleagues documented, finally, a sordid story of corruption and duplicity that involved not only Puliafito, but also the police, prosecutors, USC administrators, and his own newspaper. “Arrogant, egomaniacal, and quick to anger,” Puliafito had plied his young lover with drugs—bringing them to her even when she was in rehab programs—in order to keep his hold on her. As medical school dean, he hobnobbed with the rich and famous, including USC’s “bloated board of trustees,” which included “ultrarich industrialists, sports and entertainment moguls, bankers, construction barons, real estate investors, and financiers.” The author also discovered that he was surrounded by a “circle of addicts and criminals.” After Pringle wrote his story, he faced repeated frustration from his editors, who refused to publish a piece that would upset the imperious president of USC. The newsroom drama is as juicy as the dramas at the university. Besides the Puliafito affair, Pringle found out about a longtime gynecologist in the university’s health services who sexually abused patients and, in an episode known as “Varsity Blues,” how wealthy parents paid huge sums to have their children admitted as star athletes.

A brisk chronicle of sex, lies, and betrayal.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940176472523
Publisher:	Macmillan Audio
Publication date:	07/19/2022
Edition description:	Unabridged

Videos