Acclaimed Vanity Fair contributor Bryan Burrough brings to life the most spectacular crime wave in American history: the two-year battle between J. Edgar Hoover's FBI and John Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde, Baby Face Nelson, Pretty Boy Floyd, and the Barkers. [Penguin Press]
Critic Reviews
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Outstanding
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Chicago Sun-Times Roger K. Miller
It is quite superb -- readable, thorough and critical -- with masses of new information from FBI files that were opened only in the late 1980s.
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Outstanding
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Chicago Tribune Matthew Dallek
Burrough's narrative is fast-paced, his prose captivating. Drawing upon several hundred-thousand FBI documents, Burrough has conducted important new research. He re-creates in vivid detail the criminals' whereabouts, characteristics and ignominious rise to Depression-era fame.
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Outstanding
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Entertainment Weekly Bob Cannon
Enemies is an amazingly detailed true-life thriller that puts us on a stakeout alongside the feds, inside the banks while bullets fly, and inevitably, next to the criminals' bloody corpses.
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Outstanding
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Kirkus Reviews
Iconoclastic and fascinating. A genuine treat for true-crime buffs, and for anyone interested in the New Deal era.
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Outstanding
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Publishers Weekly
[Burrough] successfully translates years of dogged research, which included thorough review of recently disclosed FBI files, into a graceful narrative.
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Outstanding
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The Spectator David Hughes
The air of an old movie pervades these pages, an early talkie, with scratchy soundtrack, slightly overacted, as creaky as its cast's own ethics. The delight lies always in the detail.
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Outstanding
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Wall Street Journal Richard Tofel
Mr. Burrough does a remarkable job of reportorial reconstruction, drawing from hundreds of thousands of pages of FBI files released only in the past quarter-century. He seems to have absorbed every detail.
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Outstanding
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Washington Post Lawrence M. Friedman
It is a wild and amazing story, and Burrough tells it with great gusto... It is easy to toss around terms like "definitive," but this book deserves it. It is hard to imagine a more careful, complete and entrancing book on this subject, and on this era.
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Favorable
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The Guardian Clare Longrigg
A rollicking ride through an endless series of bank heists and car chases.
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Favorable
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San Francisco Chronicle Chuck Leddy
Excellent reading for fans of American history and true crime.
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Favorable
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The New York Times Edward P. Lazarus
Fascinating but also a bit numbing. At some point one well-told stickup and getaway begins to run into another.
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Favorable
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The New York Times Book Review Mark Costello
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. Burrough's stirring book goes easy on the Ph.D. conclusions.
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