Book Review: Public Enemies

Over winter break I had some time to read for fun, so I picked up Bryan Burrough's Public Enemies. A book that has since been turned into a major movie courtesy of Universal Pictures.


The book is a historical account of the crime wave of 1933-34 and the consequential rise of the FBI. Instead of a dry history text book feel, it reads like a novel jumping between different "characters", like John Dillinger and Machine Gun Kelly, to paint a picture of the simultaneous crime sprees. While chronicling the endeavors of America's most beloved criminals, it also documents the efforts made to apprehend them, which were laughable at best. It's long, 552 pages in total, but well worth it if you have any interest in the depression-era bank robbers, the FBI, or just American History.


What interested me the most, was how Burrough dealt with the public images of both the criminals and the crime fighters and contrasting them with reality. He spends much of the movie debunking myths about both  parties. For starters, there was nothing glamorous about organized crime in the 1930's. If these thugs were injured in a shoot out they couldn't seek medical help unless they knew a corrupt doctor, they frequently lived out of their cars, they had all types of STD's, and they were constantly on the run. More shocking is the how the FBI used to be viewed. Before it was the omnipresent federal crime fighting force it is today, it was basically a loose confederation of law school graduates who couldn't carry guns, make arrests without local police, or pursuit fugitives across state lines. One of Hoover's biggest struggles in the early days way establishing a menacing public-image for his new bureau (I laughed out loud several times at the horrific blunders of the FBI in it's early days).


John Dillinger proves an interesting case study in appearances. He was one of the few outlaws concerned with his public image; he had some delusional sense that he was a Robin Hood-like figure and that he was stealing from only the rich to benefit the poor. He always dressed nicely for robberies, treated his hostages with respect, and in one bout of theatrics actually gave a WPA worker back his money claiming he didn't want the people's money, but the banks. Dillinger's attentiveness to public image turned him into an American anti-hero. Many people supported him in his exploits against "the banks".