Customer Reviews

DILLINGER, The Hidden Truth

5 star:		(23)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

In eight pages of acknowledgements at the end of this book, Mr. Stewart fails to thank his editor. There are many thanks given to old friends, researchers, family, etc., but he must have forgotten his editor (or he must have forgotten to have one). I realize it isn't chic these days to spell or punctuate correctly, but as I read this mess, I couldn't help but feel duped. Mr. Stewart has a great deal of difficulty writing in complete sentences and he obviously never learned the old elementary school rule about commas: when it doubt, leave it out. Capitalization and the use of the apostrophe also give Mr. Stewart a great deal of difficulty. Page 40 is nearly incoherent, with such gems as, "American's considered the banks as the bad guys; after all they were the ones stealing from the people when the banks failed in 1933." and "By 1933, the Bureau's moral increased to 425 agents." At least he got the apostrophe correct in the last sentence, but it's difficult to tell what he means in either of them.
While Stewart claims to have done a great deal of research in order to write this book, perhaps he should have done the research and allowed someone with a better knowledge of the English language and the writing process do the writing. Also, Stewart constantly interjects his personal opinions, another example of bad writing and an annoyance that makes his "facts" suspect. But I could probably live with that if it were not for sentences such as, "Charley Arthur Floyd was Well-Known as Pretty Boy Floyd, the Robin Hood of Cookson Hills, and the Oklahoma bank robber. He was shot and killed by federal agents on October 22, 1934, Near East Liverpool, Ohio." While I believe Mr. Floyd's given name was "Charles," and that Tony Stewart probably didn't know him well enough to call him "Charlie," that doesn't bother me half as much as the strange capitalization and surplus commas.
I truly regret spending $24.56 on this book. If there are any "hidden truths" in these pages, it's difficult to tell what they are because the book is so poorly written.

This is a semi-literate, poorly written vanity publication that is not worth even the Amazon.com discounted price. It is rambling, with poorly organized, run-on paragraphs. It has a decided dictated but not read, first draft quality that makes for a painful read. As history, it is also dubious, relying on absolutely no footnotes, endotes or citations. And what's the "Hiddent Truth"? Stewart's thesis is that Dillinger and his ilk were not "cold-blooded" killers as characterized by the press and the FBI. No, being "cold-blooded" takes premeditation. Dillinger, et al., just killed when trying to escape from prison or the law or when shot at while robbing banks or kidnapping people. See, they really weren't so bad after all, just trying to make a living in the Depression. This is a vanity publication with no reason to be vain. Amazon.com should have have a warning when a book is self-published.

This book is a disgrace.

It is clear in the first few pages that it is not an accurate account of John Dillinger, his cohorts or the 1930s. When I purchased this book, I thought I was buying a historical analysis of the "Dillinger Days," where the author would present the facts and allow me to draw my own conclusions. Instead, what I got was a one-sided view of conspiracy theories.

Even worse, the book is riddled with typos (i.e. the caption under the first picture of Dillinger), the language is simplistic (borderline insulting) and in the first three chaprters alone I counted more than 15 grammatical errors. What's more, the author purports to be a student of history, but not one footnote appears in the text after a supposed fact; leaving much of what's read open to a heavy and well-deserved dose skepticism.

From page 1, the author proudly demonstrates a strong bias against the government which leads to - not an open discussion of facts - but to a long-winded tale of conspiracy theories which boggle the mind. Everything from orgies involving the Kennedys and Marilyn Monroe; to claims that Hoover deliberatly shirked his responsibilities as FBI Director in exchange for tips on winning horse races.

The book was not hailed by any major periodicle or book club, but not surprisngly, received much acclaim from fellow conspiracy theorists and anti-government types. Go figure.

Anyone with an interest in history will be most dissapointed with this book. Be very skeptical of any reader who has given this book a "5 Star" rating.

Book repeats the same stories from chapter to chapter. In some cases almost verbatim. From the Preface to the Forward to the first three chapters there are multiple retellings.

The book doesn't seem to have any structure but rather a meandering commentary with some of the longest run on paragraphs I have ever seen.

I was surprised at the numberous misspellings and wrong word usuage ('four' instead of 'for') throughout the book.

This is a semi-literate, poorly written vanity publication that is not worth even the Amazon.com discounted price. It is rambling, with poorly organized, run-on paragraphs. It has a decided dictated but not read, first draft quality that makes for a painful read. As history, it is also dubious, relying on absolutely no footnotes, endotes or citations. And what's the "Hiddent Truth"? Stewart's thesis is that Dillinger and his ilk were not "cold-blooded" killers as characterized by the press and the FBI. No, being "cold-blooded" takes premeditation. Dillinger, et al., just killed when trying to escape from prison or the law or when shot at while robbing banks or kidnapping people. See, they really weren't so bad after all, just trying to make a living in the Depression. ...

The book is one of the poorest written I have seen in a long time. This book is a shining example to why all writers should have an editor. Each chapter is just a reprint of the previous chapter. No endnotes or footnotes! There were no hidden truths in the book since generally everything it contains is common knowledge, except he had to repeat it over and over and over. If the reader likes to skip around while reading...this is the book to do that with it since it failed to hold this readers attention.

I'm afraid that, as far as this fan of Dillinger lore is concerned, whatever unknown secrets John Dillinger may have had, remain buried with him.

Tony Clark's "Dillinger, The Hidden Truth" is an unreadable book for anyone with even the slightest interest in either the 1930's gangster era, or in the grammatically correct use of the English language.

While I will flip through and scan the book to its finish, sometime when I'm very bored, I'm writing this review after `reading' only 167 pages of Mr. Clark's torturous accounts of the facts and his mangling of sentence structure and syntax.

I believe I've read every book in the Dillinger canon and my recommendation as the best book on the subject is "Dillinger, The Untold Story" by G. Russell Girardin with William J. Smith. Mr. Smith wrote a 600 page, never published, 1930's manuscript on Dillinger which drew heavily upon contemporary accounts given by Dillinger's lawyer, Louis Piquett. Mr. Girardin then combines that source with his considerable knowledge of Dillinger, and other outlaws of the 1930's, into a very stylish, entertaining and informative book. For seasoned aficionados and first time Dillinger readers alike, this is the single best book on that gangster's life.

Regarding Mr. Clark's assault on the use of language, the less said the better.

I do feel, however, that this review's readers deserve at least one example; from the many I could quote, of why Mr. Clark's book is unreadable:

The second sentence on page 146 of the Xlibris Corp. soft cover edition of "Dillinger, The Hidden Truth" reads. "She seen a man with a machinegun, who she later claimed was Harry Pierpont, but she was mistaken."

I'll leave it to this review's readers to deconstruct the multiple errors in that sentence, as I'm sure it will be a far more enjoyable exercise than paying for the book and then having to actually read it.

Although this book has a lot of interesting information in it that varies from and/or adds to other books on the subject, to me it reeks of bias in favor of the subject, despite what the author says (maybe because he's related to Dillinger's wife!). And you would think that after spending some 30 years on it, like the author says, that the grammar and spelling would be better - indeed, the grammatical and spelling errors in here are horrendous, to the point of being distracting. How about a proofreader? [...] Conspiracy theorists will love this, however. It is interesting - I'm just not sure if I believe a lot of it though.

This book on John Dillinger, published in October 2002, by Tony Stewart has come with some good and very poor book reviews in the past. I feel it is somewhere in the middle as Mr. Stewart does have some new material on the Dillinger Gang. It is a self-published work by Xlibris Corporation and may have not been edited, as some readers have alreay discovered many grammatical errors. However, I am an avid researcher/writer of the outlaws of the Pre-Depression and Depression Era and have found that most recently published books of this time period have something to offer. Such is Tony Stewart's work on the "Gangsters & G-Men of the Great Depression Era." Next time it might be well worth his time to use either footnotes or endnotes to document his work.

Michael Koch, author of "The Kimes Gang."

I don't think the other reviewers who gave this book 5 stars have even read this book. Maybe they were just confused, and thought they were reviewing a good book. More than likely they are just friends and family, but all the positive reviews and a desire to learn more about the charismatic Dillinger led me to purchase this book.

Oh, the humanity!

Simply put, this book is not good, unless of course you want to have the date of Dillingers' death repeated ad nauseum and a bitter hatred of J. Edgar Hoover shoved in your face. I'm just talking about the first chapter here, folks. There are alot of reasons to dislike this book, although some of the pictures used are unique.