Book Reviews: Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34

• Author: Major Jimmy Bagwell
• Pages: 08

PUBLIC ENEMIES: AMERICA'S GREATEST CRIME WAVE AND THE BIRTH OF THE FBI, 1933-341

MAJOR JIMMY BAGWELL2

In 1933, during the height of the Great Depression, the United States waged a vicious war. But unlike the First World War or the Second World War yet to come, the United States did not wage this war on distant European battlefields against foreign soldiers. Instead, this war raged across the American heartland and pitted "highly mobile [criminals] armed with submachine guns"3 against outgunned local law enforcement officials and the hapless agents of the fledgling new Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

Presented against the backdrop of widespread poverty, for which many Americans blamed the government and the banks,4 and aided by the availability of fast cars that provided unprecedented mobility, "[t]he stage was set for the emergence of a new kind of criminal. . . ."5 Thanks in part to Hollywood's glamorized accounts of organized crime such as Bonnie and Clyde in 19676 and Public Enemy in 1931,7 "[t]he names of these bogeymen still resonate: Baby Face Nelson, Machine Gun Kelly, Ma Barker, Bonnie and Clyde,"8 John Dillinger, Pretty Boy Floyd.9

Enter author Bryan Burrough. Motivated by the knowledge that most Americans today, including direct descendants of the criminals themselves,10 know precious little about the depression-era War on Crime and even less about FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's revisionist efforts to conceal the bumbling efforts of his FBI that pursued the criminals,11 Burrough authored Public Enemies: America's Greatest

Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34. While researching for the book, Burrough discovered that the FBI did not release its voluminous files regarding these cases until the 1980's.12 Thus, despite the existence of other books addressing the topic,13 Burrough's volume was to be "the first comprehensive narrative history of the FBI's War on Crime. . . ."14 Burrough's intentions in writing the book are two-fold: first, strip away the folklore to provide a detailed account of depression-era criminals, and second, debunk Hoover's revisionist history to provide an objective review of the FBI's performance throughout the depression-era War on Crime. How did Burrough fare? He succeeds remarkably on both fronts.

1. A Detailed Chronological Narrative of a Previously Untold Story

   Burrough acknowledges at the book's onset the complexity of telling this story in its entirety.15 Others have written on individual players or isolated events within the depression-era War on Crime.16 For example, one book that Burrough references, Dillinger Days,17 focuses on its namesake, but "deals glancingly with Dillinger's criminal contemporaries."18 In Burrough's estimation, no previous book has overcome the difficulties inherent in comprehensively accounting for all of the major crime figures of the time.19 To navigate his way through the complex weave of the people, places, and events of 1933 and 1934, Burrough tells the story in a straightforward chronological narrative fashion. At first blush, this method seems logical since the time period he seeks to cover amounts to a mere eighteen months. However, when taking a second look, this method is overly cumbersome because Burrough unsuccessfully juggles the stories of five separate crime groups and alternates back and forth between the story lines with impunity. For example, Burrough begins chapter five by introducing Baby Face Nelson and briefly narrating his formative years before bringing the reader up to speed with details of...