Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34,   ISBN:9780143115861

Customer Rating: 

This author has definitely done his research. I absolutely couldn't put this book down. It's very well written and really opens your eyes to that part of history.

Customer Rating: 

This nonfiction book is informative with an engaging style. Offering a great deal of well documented information, it holds the reader's attention without seeming like a textbook. The author debunks some myths and provides us with comic relief. While sparing us horror and gore, he does not sugar coat the hard facts.

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I very much enjoyed Public Enemies. I took it me while I traveled, and it entertained me during a very long flight. It's length is just right. I am very interested in the beginnings of the FBI and in J. Edgar Hoover. The book jumped around somewhat among the different groups of public enemies and forward and back in time and thus was occasionally a little difficult to keep up with, but it always held my attention. It was extremely interesting. What I found most intriguing was how inept the FBI was at that time and the turf battles between the local police and the FBI. Hoover's egotism is well known, but some of the descriptions of his behavior were surprising. Public Enemies was a page turner for me, and I highly recommend it.

Customer Rating: 

Never saw the movie that was based on this book (also called Public Enemies) because of the mixed reviews that I heard. Browsing in a bookstore one day, I ran across the book. After reading the back copy and realizing that it was a non-fiction account of "America's Greatest Crime Wave," I decided to pick it up.

I started reading it that same day and did not put down the 500+ page tome until I read the last word. This book is up there with the best of the fictionalized non-fiction genre (In Cold Blood, The Devil In The White City, etc.) and is fascinating from the first page. Reading the lurid tales of Dillinger, Bonnie & Clyde, Pretty Boy Floyd, Baby Face Nelson, and many other gangsters through this turbulent two year period is an unexpectedly gratifying journey through history.

All of these gangsters rose to prominence in the same two year time period. It was the best of times for those outside the law. They had more money, guns, and better cars than most of the police. When this started to change with the creation of the FBI, and Hoover's persistent expansion of its powers, the battle between the good boys and the bad was quickly reaching a crescendo in the early 1930's. Burrough's thoroughly recounts the details of the gangsters' lives, taking what most have been truckloads of research and condensing it into palatable chunks of information.

As great as the book is, it does have one flaw in particular. It would have been nice to include more personal information about the FBI, especially Hoover. Both Melvin Purvis and Hoover get a perfunctory once-over compared to the gangsters, but the rest of the FBI agents hardly get a mention. I was especially disappointed not to learn more about the rumors about Hoover's personal life, which barely warrants one line in this book.

All in all, this is a must read for anyone remotely interested in this time period, the creation of the FBI, or 30's era gangsters. In addition to it being a good history lesson and a great book, it also offers insight into the phenomenon of the criminally famous and the blurred lines between the "good" folks and bad. Dillinger's portrayal was especially interesting and sheds light on the why he did what he did rather than simply recounting his deeds. Reading about the ordinary men who entered a life of crime during tough economic times reminds us how close all of us are to desperation and wrongdoing unless we are grounded in something more substantial than financial comfort. Recommended.

Customer Rating: 

Bryan Burrough's Public Enemies is among the best historical works I've read in the last few years. Burrough takes what must have been a mountain of research and turns it into a readable, intelligent, and often exciting story.

Public Enemies is the basis of Michael Mann's movie, which focuses primarily on the year-long crime spree of John Dillinger. But Burrough's book features not only Dillinger, but also Pretty Boy Floyd (a virtual cameo in the movie), Baby Face Nelson, Bonnie and Clyde, Machine Gun Kelly, and the Barker-Karpis Gang. Each gang's story intertwines in sometimes surprising ways, and the criminals' activities are interwoven with the halting initial steps of the FBI.

Burrough masterfully characterizes the figures populating his history. The major figures--and even many of the hundreds of smaller players--become more than names and faces, but real people with personalities, vices, and virtues. Hoover is a bulldog about fighting crime, but an officious, sometimes petty boss. Purvis cares perhaps too much about his appearance, and Samuel P. Cowley, Purvis's replacement as head of the Dillinger Squad, is a hardworking Mormon with a surprising amount of guts.

This gift for description and characterization especially helps when Burrough discusses the criminals in his story. Here he does a lot of myth-busting. Dillinger, hardly the romantic figure even Michael Mann portrayed him to be, was a user whose sociopathy was at least partially tempered by his charm and discretion. Bonnie and Clyde, hardly the storm-tossed lovers of the 1960s film, were murderous rednecks. Casting a more critical light on these often romanticized legends is one of the virtues of Burrough's book.

A few other reviewers have accused Burrough of glorifying Dillinger and his ilk, or even of being "pro-criminal." This is not the case. Burrough dwells on the FBI's numerous screwups precisely because there were so many. Putting a positive spin on the FBI's many early errors would be a mistake. Burrough's point is that despite the sometimes Keystone Kops-like behavior and the testy internal politics of the FBI, they got the job done.

Highly recommended.