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Public Enemies
 
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Public Enemies [Abridged, Audiobook] [Audio CD]

Bryan Burrough (Author, Introduction), Campbell Scott (Reader)
3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)

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From Publishers Weekly

Burrough, an award-winning financial journalist and Vanity Fair special correspondent, best known for Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco, switches gears to produce the definitive account of the 1930s crime wave that brought notorious criminals like John Dillinger and Bonnie and Clyde to America's front pages. Burrough's fascination with his subject matter stems from a family connection—his paternal grandfather manned a roadblock in Arkansas during the hunt for Bonnie and Clyde—and he successfully translates years of dogged research, which included thorough review of recently disclosed FBI files, into a graceful narrative. This true crime history appropriately balances violent shootouts and schemes for daring prison breaks with a detailed account of how the slew of robberies and headlines helped an ambitious federal bureaucrat named J. Edgar Hoover transform a small agency into the FBI we know today. While some of the details (e.g., that Dillinger got a traffic ticket) are trivial, this book compellingly brings back to life people and times distorted in the popular imagination by hagiographic bureau memoirs and Hollywood. Burrough's recent New York Times op-ed piece drawing parallels between the bureau's "reinvention" in the 1930s and today's reform efforts to combat the war on terror will help attract readers looking for lessons from history.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

The literature on Depression-era desperadoes such as John Dillinger is exhaustive but hardly exhausted, as Stanley Hamilton's Machine Gun Kelly's Last Stand (2003) and Burroughs' offering indicate. Burroughs imparts his personal fascination with such charismatic criminals to his readers as he strips the mopes of folkloric myth to restore them to their rightful places as bank robbers, kidnappers, carjackers, and cop killers. Burroughs' work also benefits from recently released FBI records. His narrative seamlessly incorporates that information with extant knowledge, a boon to readers ready for a chronicle of the cases that elevated the Bureau of Investigation to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In 1933 the BI was not yet the country's premier police agency; it became so via its pursuit of gangsters who murdered BI agents in an infamous Kansas City attack. Burroughs' grip on J. Edgar Hoover's subsequent investigations is solid as he slyly dramatizes what kind of people Bonnie and Clyde, "Baby Face" Nelson, "Pretty Boy" Floyd, the Karpis-Barker gang, and their confederates really were. A 10-strike for the true-crime fan. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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4 Reviews
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3.2 out of 5 stars (4 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars The Real Story of '30s Gangsters-Not the Hollywood Version, July 15 2004
By A Customer
This review is from: Public Enemies (Hardcover)
Brian Burrough has taken alot of time to set the record straight about several major criminal gangs in the 1930s. John Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde, "Baby Face Nelson" and other criminals traveled primarily through the central U.S., robbing and murdering along the way. Local police deparmtents were either powerless to stop them or were so corrupt they wouldn't do anything. Into this situation stepped the U.S. Department of Justice's Bureau of Investigation. (It was named the Federal Bureau of Investigation -- the F.B.I.-- later.) It's agents were not the highly-trained agents we see today. J. Edgar Hoover and his agents had to learn along the way; they get the job done, but mistakes are made as the criminals are rounded up. Be prepared to see the criminals in a new light: Bonnie and Clyde, for example, are nothing like the 1960s movie. The real Bonnie & Clyde were nothing but sociopaths who murdered at the drop of a hat.

If you have liked Burrough's other efforts (Barbarians at the Gate, Vendetta, and Dragonfly) you will enjoy Public Enemies. If you haven't read any of his previous works, get this book and you will be happy to have read it!

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Great Read, Aug 5 2009
By 
Thinks-he's-an-expert Bill (Cambridge, Ontario) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   
This review is from: Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34 (Paperback)
This book, although fairly long, was hard to put down. My father, a provincial police officer from the 50's to the 70's, often talked about John Dillinger, Pretty Boy Floyd, Baby Face Nelson and Machine Gun Kelly. Seeing the movie Public Enemies got me interested. It's easy to see how these criminal characters captured the public's attention in their day.

The book progresses chronologically through the years 1933 and 1934. As a result it can be a little hard to follow at times. It is a huge cast of characters which includes the above mentioned as well as Bonnie and Clyde. However, it is interesting how the lives of many of these criminals sometimes intersected. So the chronological treatment probably makes sense, at least in the historical perspective. Burrough explains in his introduction that he himself was amazed about all this criminal activity over these two years and how it led to the formation of the FBI. He theorizes that the advent of fast V8 automobiles was as important a factor as the poverty of the depression. This book is interesting from both a historical and a sociological perspective.

Some of the previous reviewers seem to take a pro law enforcement stance. In actuality, law enforcement probably was fairly weak at the time and hampered by the technology of the day. You can imagine the Dillinger/Nelson gang robbing a local bank and speeding out of town in a new V8 Ford while the local sheriff runs over to crank up his Model T. The book does appear reasonably well researched relying on both previously written books and FBI documents. He seems to have tried to cross reference details and dates. I've learned to not trust everything I read and expect that most authors will introduce some colouration into a tale.

Fascinating reading and highly recommended.
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0 of 4 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars Burrough misses the mark, July 19 2004
By 
E. Woods (Cincinnati, Ohio United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Public Enemies (Hardcover)
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 apparently read Purvis's autobiography, American Agent and at times paraphrases it almost 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 story.

Burrough nearly gushes over the bad 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 given the tenor of the times, were the equivalent of today's domestic terrorists. Dillinger should be more likened to Timothy McVeigh.

When Little Bohemia-type police incidents happen today they are replayed countless times on every network and popular 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 move 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 general had a long road ahead, yet Burroughs all but ignores that America was barely out of the Old West and the Jesse James era and minimizes what Purvis and his men faced; almost 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 totally distorts the demise of Dillinger: Purvis was in the alley with Dillinger as he was shot three times, and true to his own strong character had instructed his men that none of the agent's involved would claim credit for getting Dillinger. Purvis did not like sensationalizing death-he wanted to see criminals in prison. Burrough also ignores the countless other 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.

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