Get Capone: The Secret Plot That Captured America's Most Wanted Gangster [Hardcover]

Jonathan Eig (Author)

Book Description

Release date: April 27, 2010

Drawing on thousands of pages of recently discovered government documents, wiretap transcripts, and Al Capone’s handwritten personal letters, New York Times bestselling author Jonathan Eig tells the dramatic story of the rise and fall of the nation’s most notorious criminal in rich new detail.

From the moment he arrived in Chicago in 1920, Capone found himself in a world of limitless opportunity. He was an impetuous, affable young man of average intelligence, ill prepared for fame and fortune, whose most notable characteristic was his scarred left cheek. Yet within a few years, Capone controlled an illegal bootlegging business with annual revenue rivaling that of some of the nation’s largest corporations. Along the way he corrupted the Chicago police force and local courts while becoming one of the world’s first international celebrities.

A furious President Herbert Hoover insisted that Capone be brought to justice because the criminal was making a mockery of federal law. Legend credits Eliot Ness and his “Untouchables” with apprehending Capone. But it was the U.S. attorney in Chicago and little-known agents working on direct orders from the White House who compromised their ethics—and risked their lives—to get their man.

The most infamous crime attributed to Capone was the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, a crime that Capone insisted he didn’t commit. Using newly discovered FBI records, Eig offers a surprising explanation for the murders.

Get Capone explores every aspect of the man called “Scarface,” paying particular attention to the myths that have for so long surrounded and obscured him. Capone emerges as a worldly, emotionally complex man, doomed as much by his ego as by his vicious criminality. This is the real Al Capone.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Not since the hunt for John Wilkes Booth... had so many sources been brought to bear in an attempt to jail one man, writes former Chicago magazine editor Eig (Opening Day). But Al Capone eluded them all—even J. Edgar Hoover. In a page-turning account, Eig details the chase for the elusive Capone, dissecting both the man and his myth. Born in Brooklyn in 1899, Alphonse Capone came to a booming, bustling, corrupt, and very thirsty Chicago in 1920, just as Prohibition began. Rising swiftly through the underworld ranks, Capone soon headed a crime syndicate he dubbed the outfit, which dealt in bootleg alcohol, racketeering, drugs, and prostitution. Eig traces the largely unsuccessful efforts by various law enforcement agencies to bring him down. He focuses on U.S. Attorney George E.Q. Johnson, who finally saw Capone convicted in 1931 for tax evasion and conspiring to violate Prohibition laws, leading to an 11-year prison sentence. Using previously unreleased IRS files, Johnson's papers, even notes he discovered for a ghostwritten Capone autobiography, Eig presents a multifaceted portrait of a shrewd man who built a criminal empire worth millions. 16 pages of b&w photos. (May 1)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine

Certainly enough has been written about Capone to make new books on the gangster and the hunt for him seem extraneous, but Eig takes a fresh approach to his subject by relying on new interviews and IRS files on Capone's 1931 prosecution. Critics praised Eig's solid reporting and ability to draw a rich, historical context and tease out Capone's complexity. "He's wiped away the garbage and given us a man," noted the Chicago Sun-Times, "[s]omeone monstrous, in short, but recognizably human." A few reviewers disagreed about Eig's writing style, and not all enjoyed his details on tax evasion or bought his claims about the St. Valentine's Day massacre. If previous books cover the same material, Eig, in the end, manages to put a more human face on Capone--where possible.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 480 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; First Edition edition (April 27, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 141658059X
• ISBN-13: 978-1416580591
• Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 1.4 x 9.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (58 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #548,823 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Jonathan Eig is the best-selling author of "Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig" and "Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson's First Season." His most recent book is "Get Capone," which the New York Times called a "gore-spattered thriller." Eig is a former senior writer for The Wall Street Journal. He lives in Chicago with his wife and children. For more information, go to www.getcapone.com or wwww.jonathaneig.com.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

38 of 51 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant: the best book on organized crime in years April 24, 2010

By Timothy S. Hays

Format:Hardcover

This thoroughly-researched, richly explicative history of Al Capone and his times should be in the library of anyone who enjoys reading about 20th Century crime, and its roots; Al Capone, Prohibition, or Chicago-- it is authoritative on all counts. "Get Capone" is excellently written, and painstakingly produced, without a fault. The author knows his economic history, too: his contrast of Capone's Chicago with the excesses of Wall Street are succinct.
"Get Capone" lays to rest the myth of Eliot Ness, whose role in convicting Al Capone has been greatly over-romanticized since the 1950s. Jonathan Eig rightly credits the quieter law enforcement figures who ended Capone's crime career. Eig is a scholar who recaptures Pres. Herbert Hoover's role in chasing Chicago's gangsters.
If you enjoyed Bryan Burrough's "Public Enemies," you will love this book.
For that matter, if you enjoyed "Luckiest Man" as much as my two sons and I did, "Get Capone" is another book for your permanent library. Jonathan Eig is a biographer on a par with Evan Thomas, Walter Isaacson, or Robert Caro.

24 of 32 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Riveting All-American Parable of Ambition, Violence, and Punishment April 29, 2010

By Joel

Format:Hardcover

Get Capone is a truly riveting piece of work. It succeeds equally well as: a gin and morality-laced tale of an anti-hero's rise and fall; a nuanced social history of America roaring into modernity; and a page-turning detective thriller about crime-fighting on the cusp of the age of CSI.

Not only does every page of the book advance an incredibly compelling narrative, but it is also full of snappy language - alternatively poetic, hysterical, and profound -- that makes this book a literally delight but never distracts from its central story.

Here are just two of my favorite passages:

"The Great War was over. Men were back home, maybe a little shell-shocked, maybe a little bored, certainly thirsty."

"(Herbert Hoover's) father was a blacksmith, a pious man, with a hot dash of American ambition."

Eig is extraordinarily careful to separate provable fact from the massive tumult of myth and conjecture that still surrounds Capone's life, but he is nevertheless able to masterfully portray Capone as a complex figure who is alternatively ruthless, pathetic, funny, managerially brilliant, and tone-death to the real-life consequences of both his media pronouncements and his chosen profession. Decades before Tony Soprano ended up on Dr. Jennifer Melfi's couch, Eig gives us a multi-faceted portrayal of Capone's ever-fascinating psyche.

56 of 77 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Very well researched May 7, 2010

By Deirdre Marie Capone

Format:Hardcover

My Uncle Al Capone was quoted in the newspapers during his botched up 1931 trial as saying:

"I've got a mother who never misses mass unless she's too sick to get out of bed. I've a wife who loves me as dearly as any woman could love a man. They have feelings. They are hurt by what the newspapers say about me. And I can't tell you what it does to my twelve-year-old son when the other school children, cruel as they are, keep showing him newspaper stories that call me a killer or worse."

"I was willing to go to jail. I could have taken my stretch, come back to my wife and child, and lived my own life. But I'm being hounded by a public that won't give me a fair chance. They want a full show, all the courtroom trappings, the hue and cry, and all the rest. It's utterly impossible for a man of my age to have done all the things I'm charged with. I'm a spook, born of a million minds."

Author Jonathan Eig has done a very good job at researching and reporting some big errors in most of the previously written biographies on Al Capone and his era. I know my cousin Theresa is upset that another book has been written about her grandfather, but unlike Theresa I have read all of the previous books and I have also read Mr. Eigs'. Get Capone gives the reader an understanding of what life was like in the 20"s. It was a time of "kill or be killed". It is not easy for a family member to read such details.

Let's look at the facts. When my grandmother and grandfather immigrated to this country and settled in Brooklyn, the Italians were the low men on the totem pole. What chance did most of them have to be a lawyer or a doctor. The teachers in the schools complained about having them in their class calling them lazy and even claiming they smelled `greazy'. My grandmother arrived with two small boys and pregnant with her third. Six more children were born in Brooklyn.

Al Capone had a chance to succeed at a business he could run and run well. He was once described as a Rockefeller wearing a shoulder holster. There is another quote from my uncle that describes him very well. "This American system of ours, call it Americanism, call it capitalism, call it what you will, gives each and every one of us a great opportunity if we only seize it with both hands and make the most of it."

Mr Eig also gives the reader new information about the St. Valentine's Day event. This information was given to me by my grandfather. I wish it would have been public a long time ago. It would have made a huge difference in my life and in the lives of each Capone family member. I am sure I would have had my dad around for many more years.