I’m reading the newly published Citizen Carl by former Albuquerque Tribune editor Jack McElroy, a short, rollicking biography of early/mid 20th Century newspaper man, minister, muckracker and general wild guy Carl Magee. An ebook version is available through the City’s library and Hoopla.

No spoilers here aside from an invitation to read the book if you’re interested in questions like “How did the Albuquerque Tribune start?” and “How long did it take someone back then to piss off just about every powerful person in a newly formed State of New Mexico?” (okay, spoiler alert: not very long).

Because it really happened, repeatedly at various venues with myriad combatants, much of the book’s New Mexico section details McGee’s many fist fights and equally frequent libel trials. Newspapering was different back then, and the reader can bask in nostalgia and/or horror via tales of the fourth estate Wild West at the time.

Mainly, I’m sticking with the nostalgia while also picking up a bit on events and sentiments of the major pugilists players during the time of Magee’s short-lived but long influential paper, the Independent. As we’re relating here at BB, 1922 was a very interesting, quirky year here in the hinterlands, and Magee’s Independent briefly arose and luxuriated in that quirkiness.

There’s other stuff, too, and the book is proving to be worth the download or purchase, if you’re able and/or desirous of tangible readership.