About 25 years ago, I started out as a reporter covering politics. And that sort of just evolved into organized crime, because organized crime and politics were the same thing in Boston.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I started, actually, in journalism when I was - well. I started at the 'New York Times' when I was 18 years old, actually, but really got into journalism when I was 15 years old and had started a sports magazine which was trying to become a national sports magazine.
I was a political reporter for quite some time, so I followed around all sorts of different politicians.
I had worked in politics with Johnson and Nixon before becoming a historian and biographer. I kept discovering these dirtier, murkier threads in American politics that led back to Vegas' gambling interests and criminal connections.
I was concerned about the link between crime and politics, and I figured out the only way I could do something about it was to get into politics.
When I was young, I flirted with the idea of a career in journalism on one hand and politics on the other.
My own career started in New York at the 'Associated Press', a fast-paced news agency where we rarely had time for deep reporting.
I used to be a journalist.
I almost became a political journalist, having worked as a reporter at the time of Watergate. The proximity to those events motivated me, when I wound up doing philosophy, to try to use it to move the public debate.
My father was a newspaper editor, so I was surrounded by journalists my entire life. I think the fact that he was so well known may be why I chose to go into magazines and move to the States at a young age.
I was a political journalist; I came to writing novels through an interest in politics and power.