Ian Parker described the book as "a roman à clef — it was generally thought to have been inspired by the life of Howard Hughes". … See more

Murray Schumach's review in The New York Times on June 25, 1961, opens: "It was not quite proper to have printed The Carpetbaggers between covers of a book. It should have been inscribed on the walls of a public lav… See more

The Carpetbaggers was published at the onset of the sexual revolution. Only two years earlier, the U.S. Postmaster General had banned D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover from the mails as obscene. I… See more