Public Enemies: America’s Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34
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Product Description
The astonishing right tale of America’s first and greatest “War on Crime.”
In Public Enemies, Bryan Burrough strips away a thick layer of myths place out by J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI to tell the full tale of the most spectacular crime wave in American history, the two-year battle between the young Hoover and an assortment of criminals who became national icons: John Dillinger, Machine Gun Kelly, Bonnie and Clyde, Baby Face Nelson, Pretty Boy Floyd, and the Barkers.
In 1933, police jurisdictions finished at state lines, the FBI was in its infancy, and quick cars and machine guns were easily available. It was a fantastic time to be a bank robber. On hand were a motley crew of criminal masterminds, sociopaths, romantics, and cretins.
Bryan Burrough has unearthed an extraordinary amount of new material on all the major facts involved — revealing many fascinating interconnections in the vast underworld ecosystem that stretched from Texas up to Minnesota.
But the real-life relations were insignificant next to the sense of connectedness J. Edgar Hoover worked to make in the mind of the American public-using the “Fantastic Crime Wave” to gain the position of impervious power he would occupy for nearly half a century.
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This book is disappointing. It takes an anti FBI, pro criminal stance. The leader appears to hold criminals in a privileged esteem than the Law Enforcement agents who risked their lives to protect our citizens. Burrough could have done much better.
Reader’s Rating: 2 / 5
Bryan Burrough’s Public Enemies is just another thinly veiled effort-fashionable these days, to diminish the FBI, but now at the expense of the reputation of one of its icons, Melvin Purvis.
Burrough rumor has it that read Purvis’s autobiography, American Agent and at times paraphrases it nearly to the point of plagiarism, but then twists the scenarios to fit his purpose. Burrough even adds dialogue and emotion to some of the characters where it would be impossible for him to know what they said or thought. But it makes a nice tale.
Burrough nearly gushes over the terrible guys, referring to the murderous John Dillinger as the “Muhamad Ali of the Depression-era.” Hardly an intelligent or realistic comparison; in a very real sense these gangsters, even agreed the tenor of the times, were the equivalent of today’s domestic terrorists. Dillinger should be more likened to Timothy McVeigh.
When Small Bohemia-type police incidents take place today they are replayed countless times on every network and well loved police video programs. News helicopters circle repeatedly overhead capturing the gun play as black uniformed SWAT teams cordon off the area, set up road blocks and go in for the final confrontation. That’s the standard Burrough holds Purvis and his men to in 1934, forgetting that even the very first SWAT team was over three decades in the future-L.A. in the late sixties. Federal law enforcement and police tactics in all-purpose had a long road yet to be, yet Burroughs all but ignores that America was barely out of the Ancient West and the Jesse James era and minimizes what Purvis and his men faced; nearly nonexistent communications, poor vehicles, poorer roads, limited manpower and dreadfully thin intelligence. Yet they had to bravely and quickly respond; and they did.
Burrough’s reporting even really distorts the demise of Dillinger: Purvis was in the alley with Dillinger as he was shot three times, and right to his own strong character had instructed his men that none of the agent’s involved would aver credit for getting Dillinger. Purvis did not like sensationalizing death-he wanted to see criminals in prison. Burrough also ignores the countless additional bank robbers and kidnappers-a list much too long to include here, who were brought to justice as a direct result of Purvis’s bravery and leadership, not the least of which was another most wanted killer, Pretty-boy Floyd. Purvis was the quintessential G-Man.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
On and on and on and on and on and …a disappointing book because of its long-winded, rambling style, this effort should be about 200 pages shorter. Especially annoying is Burrough’s obvious glee when pointing out what he believes to be the shortfalls of FBI investigative techniques and accomplishments IN THE 1930s! Hoover and all the G-men are described as perfect baffoons while the criminals are, to an extent, glorified. Although the leader claims in the “Leader’s Note” that most of the material in the book has been authenticated and verified, some of it stretches the imagination. He is frequently agreed to recounting documents or conversations in which he includes a number of “…” references. Just what was left out? Something that didn’t bolster his case relative to how inept the FBI was? There is a snippet of review from Time on the take in that says the book is “ludicrously entertaining”–as the definition of “ludicrous” is “ridiculous”, I’d say that they got the first part right. This is a tedious and overall relatively dull work about what should be an exciting theme. Particularly absurd in a book that claims to be based on such intensive research is the leader’s copious references to “Irving Park Boulevard” in Chicago when, as any Cub fan knows, it is “Irving Park ROAD”. Much too long and much too dull.
Reader’s Rating: 2 / 5
I’m never turned off by large, well researched non-fiction books (and rarely write Amazon reviews), but Public Enemies, like the leader’s additional work, Barbarians at the Gate, is unreadable to persons lacking a very special interest in the theme matter primarily due to the overwhelming number of “characters.” Mr. Burroughs thoughtfully includes a “cast of characters” in both books, but the books contain so many people that it’s impossible to read the texts straight through lacking constantly doubling back to the cast, taking notes or re-reading sections…reminding me of my college textbook days. What is weird is that although I am a huge fan of non-fiction right crime/law enforcement AND business/finance books, I could not get past the 150 page point on either book because the tomes contain so many people/places/events and each person/place/event is agreed so small time…it felt like reading an encyclopedia and not a book. Mr. Burroughs admits that the bulk of Public Enemies is taken straight from the FBI’s own case files…six file cabinets worth. But, the book reads as if Mr. Burroughs went through each file and extracted all the appealing tidbits, then arranged them chronologically with a law enforcement timeline software package like Case Map and BAM…there’s the book…a chronological synopsis of FBI case files with a *wink wink* “look how so-and-so was connected to so-and-so and how so-and-so knew the same people as so-and-so” thrown in. I really wanted to like this book and Barbarians at the Gate, but I plot on giving both books away and never reading another Bryan Burrough book. For a fantastic book on bank robberies, check out Ballad of the Whisky Robber. And The Informant is a fantastic example of how an leader can make dry FBI case facts jump of the page…another 5 star read.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
Bryan Burrough is a columnist for Vanity Honest magazine. In this book he examines the lives and infamous careers of such
notorious bank robbers, kidnappers and murderers as John Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson, Pretty Boy Floyd, The Barker-
Karpas game of hoodlums , Machine Gun Kelly and Bonnie and Clyde.
Burrough’s chief thesis is how John Edgar Hoover and his FBI
became powerful as they learned to combat public enemies during 1933-34 from the time agents were gunned down in the Kansas City Massacre to the capture of Karpas and the deaths of severalpublic enemies.
Hoover was an egotist wise in the ways of self-promotiion as he denigrated the work of such star agents at Melvin Purvis,
Hoover’s FBI made crimes against “G’Men” a federal crime and
made the agency and its formidable director a powerful force in the Washington power game for decades to come.
The book is appealing with excellent maps of the escapades of the criminals and pictures of the various criminal gangs. It was
simple, but, to get all the names and crimes from getting mixed up.
This book could have been edited into a series of magazine profiles but is an appealing read for anyone interested in crime, life in the Fantastic Depression or the career of J. Edgar
Hoover.
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5