Capone: The Man and the Era [Paperback]

Laurence Bergreen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 5, 1996

In this brilliant history of Prohibition and its most notorious gangster, acclaimed biographer Laurence Bergreen takes us to the gritty streets of Chicago where Al Capone forged his sinister empire. Bergreen shows the seedy and glamorous sides of the age, the rise of Prohibition, the illicit liquor trade, the battlefield that was Chicago. Delving beyond the Capone mythology. Bergreen finds a paradox: a coldblooded killer, thief, pimp, and racketeer who was also a devoted son and father; a self-styled Robin Hood who rose to the top of organized crime. Capone is a masterful portrait of an extraordinary time and of the one man who reigned supreme over it all, Al Capone.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Biography of the legendary prohibition-era gangster.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

In the wake of Robert J. Schoenberg's Mr. Capone (LJ 8/92), called "the most detailed biography of Capone published to date" by LJ's reviewer, comes an even more detailed account based on extensive research and interviews. Bergreen, who has written biographies of James Agee and Irving Berlin, has "abandoned conventional assumptions of...right and wrong" in his sympathetic portrayal of the one-time Public Enemy Number One. He blames the hypocrisies of Prohibition and anti-Italian bias for creating Capone's undeserved reputation, and he is especially critical of Capone nemesis Eliot Ness. Bergreen labels the tax evasion trial that sent Capone to prison a "legalistic lynching" and tends to excuse Capone's more unsavory actions as the results of "latent neurosyphilis." However controversial, this book offers much of interest, including new information about Capone and his family. Larger crime collections will want both books.
Gregor A. Preston, Univ. of California Lib., Davis
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 704 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; 1st Touchstone ed edition (August 5, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684824477
• ISBN-13: 978-0684824475
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.2 x 1.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #228,592 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #86 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Regional U.S. > Midwest

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Doesn't Do Al Justice, September 6, 2001

By 

Rick "Mad Dog" Mattix (Iowa) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Capone: The Man and the Era (Hardcover)

If you're looking for a good in-depth study of Al Capone or the Prohibtion beer wars in Chicago, this is not the book for you. If you're looking for a biography that gets wildly sidetracked from its subject and, as an added bonus, offers questionable revisions to the Capone story, this is just the book for you. The story of Capone's "lost" brother "Two-Gun" Hart is nothing really new and Bergreen's new emphasis on him presents the family's fictional account rather than the real story. James Capone, a.k.a. "Two-Gun" Hart, was not the honest lawman Bergreen portrays him as, nor was he was a war hero. Hart lost his respected place in the community of Homer, Nebraska when his tales of wartime heroism were exposed as a sham and he could provide no proof of military service. His tough image as a "two-gun" cop resulted mostly from drunken brawls with Indians who proved tougher than he was. Bergreen devotes a third of the book to this boring fraud who makes brother Al seem, in comparison, a paragon of honesty to those who know the true facts. Another third is devoted to the colorless "Untouchable" Prohibition agent Eliot Ness, who was far less interesting than the character in the fictional TV series and movie. His story would be best told elsewhere. One section of the book deals, inaccurately, with the Depression desperadoes: Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde, Pretty Boy Floyd, etc.,--and adds nothing to the Capone story. Bergreen's report on the Thompson submachine gun, the Capone gang's trademark weapon, with its description of heavy, bruising recoil and near-impossibility to control, is a joke to anyone who's ever handled a Model 21 tommy gun. The gang wars, which should occupy center stage in a definite bio of America's most notorious mobster, are treated rather sketchily. Some other family info is way off the mark. And, on the flimsiest of evidence, Bergreen makes Capone both a pawn of the Chicago Heights mob and a cocaine addict. This is a poor excuse for a Capone biography...

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Uninteresting!, September 6, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Capone: The Man and the Era (Paperback)

This book seemed to be slapped together at the last second.The facts well there aren't many!Capone never took orders from anybody after Torrio was gone.He wasn't a cocaine fiend either and his sister Rose didn't die at birth!Author tries to sensationalize.Not many photos either.

15 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars no scars on this face, September 4, 2000

By 

John W. Cotner (Belmont, MI USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Capone: The Man and the Era (Paperback)

This book deserves better than it has gotten; I am surprised by the vehemence of some of the reviewers' reactions to it. It offers a broad, interesting, historical view of turn of the century New York, then Chicago, early 20th century politics, prohibition, the hero-worship of the Roaring 20's, the mafia, the FBI, syphillis, Alcatraz -- a whole Ragtime-like panorama. It is entertaining and instructive. Those who pan it appear to have a problem with the somewhat sympathetic portrayal of a morally objectionable person or quibble over arcane facts.

Having lived in Lansing, Michigan and spent time in the northwoods of Wisconsin, where Al Capone summered, I can say that the legend of Al Capone is still very much alive in those two locations; he rivals George Washington for having supposedly slept or shot up more places than anyone else. The author captures this aspect of Capone's life, as well as his charismatic, sympathetic Robin Hood-like persona which humanized him and endeared him to a portion of the masses.

I wa not bothered by the diversions of attention to Al Capone's brother, Two Gun Hart and his supposed nemisis, Eliot Ness, and found them interesting and germane to Capone's life story. I had not heard of the brother before but was aware that post-Capone, Ness ended up as a police official in Cleveland. Nor was I bothered by what some call an overly-sympathetic portrayal of Capone; he has aspects that frankly are sympathetic.

What strikes me as most interesting about the author's portrayal of Al Capone is that he shows how Capone -- certainly not stupid, and trained as a bookkeeper -- was the first man to apply systematic business and financial practices to the running of the mob, and increased its bottom line. He also was either more politically astute than those gangsters who came before -- although at times, just as crude in his methods -- or was lucky enough to have blatantly corrupt, receptive mayors in Chicago and Cicero when he came to power.

The author does a good job of showing how the federal government wanted to get Al Capone in the worst way and finally figured out how to do it with the Income Tax Code. The book lays out the dogged determination and methods of the agents who persevered to nail him. In the end, given the author's somewhat sympathetic portrait of Capone, you feel sorry that he got caught, and even sorrier to learn of how he was treated by fellow inmates at Alcatraz. Most biographers seem to gravitate toward either abhorring or loving their subjects and this author is no exception, tending toward the latter.

I recommend this book. Unless you are a Capone fanatic and know all there is to know about him already, the factual presentation will not put you off. I frankly did not know if I was reading the truth or not, but it seemed like it, and it was interesting and I thought, reasonably well-written. I am curious if there is any difference in the texts or otherwise in the newer paperback edition, versus the original hardback, which is what I read.