Get Capone
The Secret Plot That Captured America's Most Wante
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4.1 • 37 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
The real story of how the federal government finally apprehended and convicted America’s most notorious criminal, Al Capone.
Drawing on recently discovered government documents, wiretap transcripts, and Al Capone’s handwritten personal letters, New York Times bestselling author Jonathan Eig tells the dramatic story of the rise and fall of the nation’s most infamous criminal in rich new detail.
From the moment he arrived in Chicago in 1920, Capone found himself in a world with limitless opportunity. Within a few years Capone controlled an illegal bootlegging business with annual revenue rivaling that of some of the nation’s largest corporations. Along the way he corrupted the Chicago police force and local courts while becoming one of the world’s first international celebrities. Legend credits Eliot Ness and his “Untouchables” with apprehending Capone, but Eig shows that this wasn’t so. In Get Capone, the man known as “Scarface” emerges as a complex man, doomed as much by his ego as by his vicious criminality. This is the real Al Capone.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Not since the hunt for John Wilkes Booth... had so many sources been brought to bear in an attempt to jail one man, writes former Chicago magazine editor Eig (Opening Day). But Al Capone eluded them all even J. Edgar Hoover. In a page-turning account, Eig details the chase for the elusive Capone, dissecting both the man and his myth. Born in Brooklyn in 1899, Alphonse Capone came to a booming, bustling, corrupt, and very thirsty Chicago in 1920, just as Prohibition began. Rising swiftly through the underworld ranks, Capone soon headed a crime syndicate he dubbed the outfit, which dealt in bootleg alcohol, racketeering, drugs, and prostitution. Eig traces the largely unsuccessful efforts by various law enforcement agencies to bring him down. He focuses on U.S. Attorney George E.Q. Johnson, who finally saw Capone convicted in 1931 for tax evasion and conspiring to violate Prohibition laws, leading to an 11-year prison sentence. Using previously unreleased IRS files, Johnson's papers, even notes he discovered for a ghostwritten Capone autobiography, Eig presents a multifaceted portrait of a shrewd man who built a criminal empire worth millions. 16 pages of b&w photos.
Customer Reviews
Get Capone
The Book seems to be a very Good on Details and Not like Some Books That have you wondering if what is written is True Or Not.you will Not be able to put down until you read all of it.Pictures are Great
Very Good, But...
I really love Erik Larson's work. The reason being, Larson will not print a word of text unless it can be proven, established, sourced. Eig does a great job, but there were times he stretched the descriptive without any established sources. To say that the wind whipped through this person's hair, or this person thought that he...blah, blah, is conjecture unless it's established as factually having happened.
When an author posits without stating where he or she got that information I tune out, I question, I pull back from this "truthful" narrative.
I liked the book. I only wish Eig didn't try so hard.
Not Bad
Exhaustively researched, well-documented. Suffers from an awkward writing style that jumps from recitation to sensation. There are many worse, and highly inaccurate, books about the Gangster Era, so you might dive in if this sort of history interests you. Eig has trouble making his many characters come to life, but his depictions of the Roaring Twenties in general are very good.