Last night I finally finished a book I had started reading several months ago. It was entitled Public Enemies, by Bryan Burrough, and it was one of the best books I’ve read in quite some time. The length it took me to read the book was not due to any issues with the book, but issues with my schedule. I was within 50 pages of finishing about a month ago, and got sidetracked by life, and consequently never got around to finishing it until last night, when I sat down and read the final few chapters. I am glad I did.
Burrough does more than write a compelling book about a very interesting period of time and some very interesting characters. He takes cold hard facts, right from the pages of FBI documents, personal accounts, and research, and weaves a fascinating drama about some of the 20th centuries most violent men. By the time I was halfway through the book, I was in awe. It was clear that Burrough had a deep passion for his subject, and he knows how to tell a tale in a way that few other historical works have done.
The book deals with an 18 month period of time during the Great Depression in which a violent crime wave swept America, and how that this in turn birthed the law enforcement machine we know today as the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The title of the book, in fact, is actually; Public Enemies: America’s Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34. It focuses primarily on three or four different gangs: John Dillinger and his gang, the Barker gang led by Alvin Karpis, and Bonnie and Clyde. It deals with other characters at the time, including Baby Face Nelson, Pretty Boy Floyd, Machine Gun Kelly, and many others, as well as law enforcement officials like J. Edgar Hoover and Melvin Purvis. It gives brief backgrounds for each of these players, but it dwells in depth on their activities during the period mentioned by the title; that is, the years 1933 to 1934.
I’ve always been interested in books dealing with criminals, but this is by far the best one I’ve ever read. Burrough just does such a magnificent job of making the characters come to life, detailing their little idiosyncrasies, and the things that made them tick. He takes all conversations straight from the FBI files and incorporates the dialogue into the story, so the characters seem as much like people from a novel as they do historical figures. And he does a good job of balancing their stories. Obviously Dillinger, as the most notorious, seems to have the most prominent role, but Burrough does such a great job of detailing other, lesser known individuals who played roles in the crime wave that swept America. Particularly interesting, I thought, was his characterization of Baby Face Nelson, who ended up being part of the Dillinger gang. Nelson was an interesting character I had little knowledge of, but the author brings him to life in all of his homicidal tendencies.
He never minces words, either, giving the FBI praise when it was due them, but pointing out the many mistakes and flaws they made in their infancy, and detailing how Hoover made the FBI into a top flight law enforcement group while still being, for lack of a better word, a jerk. At the same time, the criminals are never portrayed as solely bad or solely good…they are shown in all of their complexity, real people living in a difficult time in America. Showing this depth of character separates Burrough from historians who get caught up in agendas…Burrough’s agenda seems to be to tell a good tale, showing both the good and bad along the way. And he does a masterful job of it. I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It is the best book I’ve read this year.
