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Dillinger's Wild Ride: The Year That Made America's Public Enemy Number One

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My first thought when flipping through my copy of Dillinger's Wild Ride was that it was going to be a hastily thrown together book aimed at cashing in on the release of Public Enemies. I figured my initial thought was confirmed when I read the acknowledgements. In them Mr. Gorn states that he approached his friendly librarian and said, "I'm getting interested in crime in the '30's; what have you got?" The Librarian suggested Dillinger and then wham bam he decided he'd write a book about the desperado.

I then flipped to the photo section and again I thought my initial reaction was justified. If you look at the wanted poster above. It's a fake, probably a souvenir from years past. The picture of Dillinger was cropped from a photo taken after his Tucson arrest and the poster states that he may be in the company of Harry Pierpont and Charles Markley[sic]. It also says that if you see Dillinger you should notify your local police or the FBI. As all Dillinger/Public Enemy era enthusiast know Pierpont and Makley were arrested with him in Tucson therefore Dillinger would no longer be in their company and the FBI wasn't known as the FBI until after Dillinger's death. A novice mistake, which again made me think, if you let that slip by should you really be writing a book on Dillinger?

So, not expecting much I started reading the book. Turns out I enjoyed it. It is a concise history of the Dillinger story and Mr. Gorn hits all important events and then describes the national reaction by quoting from newspapers from around the country, contrastng editorials- was Dillinger a Huck Finn who fell in with a bad crowd or a cold blooded killer? Depended on which paper you read. This aspect was interesting for a while but by the end I didn't really care what the Zanesville Times or the Bismarck Tribune had to say. I did find the Hollywood, Will Hayes response to the Dillinger saga interesting.

As an academic Gorn also offers some analysis of both the subject and the America of his time. Why he was loved/loathed. I found his analysis of John's letters and what it said about the bank robber the most interesting. The final chapter, Dillinger's ghost, follows the bandit in popular culture over the past 75 years, in my opinion a little to much time was spent on the ballads written about him in the 1930's but that's simply my opinion.

I see that one reviewer said that this book offers, to paraphrase, "compelling and new evidence about the subject." Unless I missed something Gorn doesn't offer anything new about Dillinger. To the author's credit however, he never said that he did. In the preface he says that his book is different from all the others because he, "...seek[s] to explain how the Dillinger story was created, interpreted, and reworked, how Americans felt about his exploits, and how we have come to remember him." [Hence four pages about ballads as opposed to a paragraph]

Other than the wanted poster snafu, which isn't a big deal, all authors make mistakes, the book is well put together. If you are looking for a quick read with an academic bent to bone up on Dillinger before the movie opens, or if you want to know more about the story but don't want to invest the time in reading Public Enemies by Brian Burrough (which I strongly suggest you do) or a full blown Dillinger bio than by all means pick up Dillinger's Wild Ride. However, if you are already a Dillingerphile this book won't really tell you anything that you don't already know about Johnnie. It will let you know how newspapers interpreted his story and how authority, whether elected officials or Will Hays in Hollywood, had to deal with the bad man many American's rooted for.

Readers familiar with Elliott Gorn's previous books (The Manly Art, A Brief History of American Sports, Mother Jones: The Most Dangerous Woman in America) know the author of Dillinger's Wild Ride as a master historian and storyteller. Gorn, Professor of American Civilization and History at Brown University, tells us in his slyly self-effacing "Acknowledgments" that he has spent his career "working history's city desk," "writing about the likes of boxers and brawlers, labor organizers, and bank robbers." His unique mode of "history from below" has consistently deepened and complicated our understanding of the American past and American culture, and this is especially true of Dillinger's Wild Ride.

The ostensible focus of the book is the period from 1933 to 1934, when Dillinger and his shifting band of fellow outlaws darted from state to state robbing banks, breaking out of prisons, embarrassing police and FBI agents, eluding capture, and capturing America's attention. But in Gorn's rich re-telling Dillinger's life story reveals the ways in which American icons shape and are shaped by the cultural moment. Gorn is particularly attuned to the ways in which Dillinger's increasingly audacious assaults on banks both fueled and expressed public frustration during the Great Depression, and he draws without dwelling on provocative parallels between that economic crisis and our own (Americans in the 30's got Dillinger; we get Bernie Madoff; go figure).

Among its many virtues, Dillinger's Wild Ride offers an extended rumination on the ways history is rewritten (often in the making) to serve specific cultural needs. The book is framed by telling instances of this impulse. Chapter 1 reveals that even the famously fact-checking New Yorker rewrote Dillinger's life story while he was still alive. James Finan's 1934 essay for the magazine, published two months before Dillinger was gunned down by FBI agents outside the Biograph Theatre in Chicago (betrayed by a woman in orange, not the woman in red of popular imagination) presents Dillinger as a product of small-town middle America, when in fact he spent most of his youth in the midsize metropolis of Indianapolis. But Gorn points out that Mooresville, Indiana, where Dillinger was born, "was not just a place, it was a metaphor by which Americans understood Dillinger's saga. Dillinger's Hoosier boyhood, followed by his descent in to crime, was an age-old American story: rural virtue and small-town honesty succumbing to urban vice." False though this trope was, it did not stop newspapers and magazines from glossing Dillinger's story "as a parable of America's declension from country virtues to city vices."

While Gorn repeatedly subjects reductive representations of Dillinger to the refiner's fire of historical scrutiny, his book also shows us how and why American icons like Dillinger periodically return to haunt the popular imagination. The book's final chapter, "Dilinger's Ghost," presents Dillinger as a kind of cultural palimpsest--an image from the past that is reused and altered while still retaining traces of the original. From the 1935 film G-Men, in which James Cagney made his transition from gangster to federal agent, bringing down a Dillinger-like criminal, to the surprise 1973 hit Dillinger, in which Warren Oates portrays the outlaw as a tragic figure, morally superior to his cold-blooded adversary Melvin Purvis, Dillinger the man and icon has served disparate cultural agendas. Dillinger, like many films appearing between 1969 and 1973 (Bonnie and Clyde, Joe, Midnight Cowboy, They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, Little Big Man) reflects the disillusionment with American institutions that characterized the era, much as the public fascination with Dillinger in the last year of his life reflected disillusionment of a different but related kind. We know from advance screenings that Public Enemies, the new film about Dillinger, plays fast and loose with the historical record (Johnny Depp as Dillinger refers to the death of "Pretty Boy Floyd" even though Charles Arthur Floyd was killed three months after Dillinger himself was killed). It remains to be seen whether the film offers any imaginative truths about the man and the crisis-torn country that Elliott Gorn brings so compellingly to life in Dillinger's Wild Ride.

Elliott J. Gorn has written a well-researched, eloquent and fluid account of the notorious Jack Rabbit who is better known as John Dillinger. The book moves at a fast clip and is never dull: but then again how could any book ever be dull about so fascinating a character? It is hard to believe that his story is real, that such a man could ever have existed. Dillinger is impossible in today's technological society with its surveillance cameras and cell phone bings and helicopter pursuits of crime cars that make the TV news as they happen. And that is part of his undying fascination. While he is implausible in today's society, today's economically recessional society is not so far different from the breeding grounds of Dillinger's Depression youth.

The book is flawed, however. It would be nice to learn the fates of some key players in Johnnie's life: Melvis Purvis for one (the G-Man most often credited with bagging the bandit, soon to be played by Batman himself...Christian Bale opposite Johnny Depp's Dillinger). Purvis shot himself, by-the-way, but you won't learn of his fate herein - nor that of Dillinger's dear old dad or best gal out of several, Billie Frechette. The photo section also excludes some important personages and it would have been nice to see them included.

The book's subtitle is actually not even needed and reads rather clumsily: "The Year that Made America's Public Enemy Number One." While the book examines the times as relates to Dillinger's doings, one does not get a larger sense of the year(s) (1933-34) as pertains to the entire country and the rest of the world. I mean, 1933 saw the ascension of the biggest criminal in the history of the world - Hitler - so for a larger historical context mention of these momentous happenings would have justified the subtitle. But such is not the case. Plus, it is actually two years that makeup the Dillinger days.

The best biography of Dillinger is still Dary Matera's book of a few years ago - and this author as much says so. So - why was this book written? Because of the upcoming 75th anniversary of of the bank robber's death and because a new Dillinger movie will hit the summer screens and anything about Johnnie D. sells? Perhaps. Whatever the motive, the results are nonetheless a stimulating read, a page-turner, a head-shaker of a book. It is a wild read of a very wild ride.

Average biography of John Dillinger. Though nicely written and well researched, there is very little in these pages that any knowledgeable student of the Public Enemy era probably doesn't already know. I found this to be more of an attempt to understand the public's fascination with this particular desperado not only during his "wild ride" of 1933 and 1934, but even now, some seventy-five years after his death. No other outlaw in history, not even Jesse James, has been covered so extensively. Much like today, very few Americans had any sympathy for what was perceived as the greedy, evil banking industry during the Great Depression; Dillinger robbed banks. To many of the downtrodden he was a Robin Hood-like figure who outwitted the authorities at every turn, shot his way out of numerous police and FBI traps, and broke out of two jails, one of which allegedly armed with nothing more than a fake pistol he carved out of wood. When in custody, Dillinger, a rather handsome man who bore a passing resemblance to a then unknown young actor named Humphrey Bogart, emanated a likeable, almost innocent, boyishness, with his crooked grin and easy laugh. He was loyal to his friends, kind to the elderly, women and children, and his family adored him. His notoriety notwithstanding, Dillinger stood accused of only one fatal shooting, that of a police officer during an East Chicago, Indiana, bank stickup, and there is some doubt of his culpability even in that instance. All these and more are closely examined in what is what I feel more of a sociological study than a straight-up gangster bio.

John Dillinger has a story that has been told over and over again and while I liked this book it really doesn't offer any new insights into his life or actions. Dillinger is basically portrayed as a criminal who caught the public eye and enjoyed it. This book doesn't romanticize him but does make note of the romantic qualities many others saw in him.

I did like the part toward the end that dealt with the growth of the Dillinger legend, however this book misses the chance to examine Dillinger's interaction with other criminal groups of his time. All in all a decent read, especially if you like this era, but don't expect anything new.

Elliott Gorn has masterfully retold the history of one of the most intriguing characters in 1930`s America: John Dillinger. In Dillinger's Wild Ride, Gorn provides compelling and new evidence about his subject, as he skillfully places Dillinger within the broader history of the popular sentiment in the United States during the Great Depression. Readers will find Gorn's biography of John Dillinger to be comprehensive, lively, and the best-written book on Dillinger to date. Gorn is particularly attentive to Dillinger's exploits as they relate to the public frustration during the Great Depression, and the book brings new insights and incisive interpretations to this much-studied subject. As the characters move from state to state, hideout to hideout, and robbery to robbery, the reader gets a sense of the intrigue, fear, and hope that Dillinger inspired in a downtrodden America. The bungling federal agents are thwarted time and again as Dillinger hides "in plain sight", and the public's fascination grows as the gang's exploits become more and more surreal. A great read!

There have been several biographies written on John Dillinger, and I have to wonder what can be said that hasn't already been said several times before. Perhaps it's because the 75th anniversary of his death is rapidly approaching. Author Elliott Gorn has researched this book very well, and theorizes that Dillinger's life of crime became cemented when he was persuaded to plead guilty to a charge of assault and battery on the owner of a grocery store during an attempted holdup in hopes of leniency from the court. Instead he was hit with a fourteen year prison sentence of which he served nine years. This prison term served as a graduate course in crime. A life of crime offered opportunities that the straight world didn't. Dillinger is viewed as both a hero or a villain by the public, many of which viewed banks as robbers of the common man. The author states the life of an outlaw involves one being alert at all times, and the frustration of not being able to do simple things enjoyed by others. Dillinger, however, at times seemed to invite the law to capture him by hiding in plain sight at Wrigley Field watching the Cubs play baseball, attending night clubs, or lounging in public places watching the people pass by. Dillinger's final day of his life is covered quite quickly without a lot of detail. The part of the book following his death is spent on the different rumors regarding his corpse along with the different books and movies that have been made regarding the gangster. Dillinger's partners in crime are all here and their demise is covered as well. I had to feel sympathy for his father as he viewed his son's body in Chicago following the gangster's death. With tears in his eyes he simply stated, "My boy."

I live in Champlin Mn about 30 min from St. Paul I had no idea what kind of very cool history this city had. You always here about Chicago and New York, St. Paul had just has much action with shoot-outs, bank robberies, car chases, kidnappings it's crazy. I gotta take the tour now. But I also didn't know that this was a place for the gangsters and bank robbers to come here and be safe. If they got into trouble and had a lot of heat on them St. Paul was a very good place to go all you have to do is keep out of trouble and don't rob any banks in St. Paul, pay a small fee and your good. But some people don't follow the rules and with the FBI coming in things started to change. But great read found out a lot about not only Dillinger, but also the Karpis-Barker gang, Verne Miller (new fav. gangster), Baby face, and guys I've never even heard of.

This book is as much about how America reacted to Dillinger as about the man himself. It reads well and can serve as a history of crime reporting in the 30's. There were also the Keystone Cops meet the Sopranos angle. How did Dillinger really escape with the carved gun? What were the connections between underworld vice and crime and the Chicago Police in the incidents surrounding the robber's short career? I bought this by mistake as a regular book, but did not regret receiving it.

Dillinger's Wild Ride was a fast-paced and very interesting look at the life of John Dillinger--almost entirely focusing on his year or so long crime spree that made him famous. The book's weak point is that it is light on details and reads like an extended newspaper account. The amount of attention the author gives to the effect of Dillinger's celebrity on society is highly detailed compared to the rest of the book...including song lyrics written about Dillinger's life and summaries of any movies pertaining to Dillinger. While interesting, it felt out of place given the lack of detail of Dillinger's actual biography.

Also frustrating for me was the information the author left out. For example, I would have liked to know his lover Billie's reaction to his death. Instead the only follow up given to their passionate relationship is that she went on a tour with Dillinger's family promoting "Crime doesn't pay."

For someone who wants to get an idea about Dillinger's life without reading a long biography: this is the book for you! For someone, like me, who wants to know more than I can find in a few google searches: take the author's advice and check more detailed works on Dillinger's life such as John Dillinger: The Life and Death of America's First Celebrity Criminal, Dillinger: The Untold Story, or The Dillinger Days.