Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34
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Burrough (a special correspondent for Vanity Fair) examines the stories of John Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson, Pretty Boy Floyd, the Barker-Karpis Gang, Machine Gun Kelly, and Bonnie and Clyde as a single narrative history of the FBI's "War on Crime" from 1933 to 1936. His examination of the recently release FBI files reveals a story vastly different from the largely mythical narrative promoted by J. Edgar Hoover or the romantic portrayals of the gangs by Hollywood. For Burrough, the story is about the bureaucratic evolution of the FBI from a bungling group of amateurs to a professional crime-fighting organization and his central aim is to reclaim the history for the individual agents involved. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR The New York Times - Mark Costello Burrough, a special correspondent for Vanity Fair and the author of Barbarians at the Gate, has written a book that brims with vivid portraiture. His Dillinger is haunting, a figure out of the fiction of Richard Ford, a man of meanness and sorrow and deep rural pessimism … As the story of the F.B.I.'s emergence from the 10-ring circus that was 1934, Public Enemies is excellent true crime with all the strengths and limitations this implies.
Author's NotexiCast of CharactersxvPrologue11A Prelude to War, Spring 193352A Massacre by Persons Unknown, June 8 to June 15, 1933193The College Boys Take the Field, June 17 to July 22, 1933514The Baying of the Hounds, July 22 to August 25, 1933715The Kid Jimmy, August 18 to September 25, 1933986The Streets of Chicago, October 12 to November 20, 19331357Ambushes, November 20 to December 31, 19331628"An Attack on All We Hold Dear," January 2 to January 28, 19341839A Star Is Born, January 30 to March 2, 193420610Dillinger and Nelson, March 3 to March 29, 193423411Crescendo, March 30 to April 10, 193426712Death in the North Woods, April 10 to April 23, 193429213"And It's Death for Bonnie and Clyde," April 23 to May 23, 193432314New Faces, May 24 to June 30, 193436215The Woman in Orange, July 1 to July 27, 193438816The Scramble, July 23 to September 12, 193441717A Field in Ohio and a Highway in Illinois, September 18 to November 27, 193444618The Last Man Standing, December 3, 1934, to January 20, 193548419Pas de Deux, January 1935 Until...515Epilogue543Bibliographical Essay553Notes556Selected Bibliography567Acknowledgments571Index573
