Customer Reviews

Mr. Capone: The Real - and Complete - Story of Al Capone

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

While attending a Chicago Cubs baseball game in the spring of Depression-deepening 1930, President Herbert Hoover was viciously booed by fellow fans. A "used furniture dealer" was also in attendance that day. The same crowd lustily cheered him. His name was Alphonse Capone.

Illuminating anecdotes like this make Robert J. Schoenberg's "Mr. Capone," an exhaustively researched and finely detailed record of an unlikely icon in modern U.S. history, a welcome read. Most books on organized crime bounce around the extremes of "Godfather-like" mystical adoration, gloomy conspiratorial hype or shrill partisan muckraking. Schoenberg's account, rejecting these worn approaches, is a refreshing, fascinating chronicle of a powerful person who, in his own way, played a key role in the development and direction of 20th century urban America.

One of the first "leaders" to make effective use of the news media to influence public opinion, Brooklyn-born Capone and his brainchild--the turbulent, uniquely multiethnic Chicago "Outfit" (as the Mafia was termed there) reflected the radical changes the U.S. was undergoing in the postwar 1920s. Among these were its complex and contradictory ethics and morals, its violence and carefree hedonism, its strenuous attempt to assimilate and reconcile multiple ethnic groups newly arrived to these shores, a deep hunger for material "success" and social "respectability" as well as the swiftly emerging predominance of the now-familiar urban environment. All of it in the spirit of Capone's curious but favorite and oft-quoted phrase; "We don't want any trouble."

However, the "trouble" that "Scarface Al" seemingly so much wanted to avoid became his own epitaph and remains a hallmark of an era that still heavily influences our society to this day. All of the popular stereotypes aside, it is the strength of "Mr. Capone" that it reminds us that the negative and lurid as well as the positive and uplifting all play a somehow vitally necessary, if often quite misunderstood, role in the continually-unfolding American experience.

This is THE definitive biography of the world's most famous gangster. The book is exceptionally well-written, able to satisfy anyone from a casual layman to an organized crime expert. Schoenberg walks us through Capone's life, showing us why he did what he did and avoiding getting caught up in the usual myths surrounding him. The author's notes at the end of the book are extremely helpful. Most of all, Schoenberg gets almost all the dates and facts right when dealing with the events surrouning Capone's life. While I personally disagree with his take on the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, he presents this event and others like it in such a precise manner one cannot help but say positive things. Anybody seeking information about Al Capone should look no further than Mr. Capone. A few other books about him have been published in the last ten years, specifically one by Laurence Bergreen, which is a far worse book and yet has received more publicity the Schoenberg's opus. All others should be ignored. Mr. Capone is the best book ever written about Al Capone.

Robert Schoenberg really did a masterful job. The way the author describes the Capone-era is breathtaking and I was pleased that he also focusses on Capone's rivals and mentor(s). Besides the enormous amount of research he did I was particularly impressed with his writing skills. His fluent and accurate style, the humour he puts into the text is simply fantastic. That's how the book earns its five stars. You read a story, not a series of facts. Schoenberg is very careful not to add to much superfluous information, something many biographers might learn from. I would say it's hard to put down, but I forced myself occasionally...so that I have something to look really forward to the following day.

I really enjoyed this book.I enjoyed it so much, i read it three times!Blows the pants off the other books which are loaded with fiction.He also gets his dates right which to me is very important.I being an Al Capone collecting enthusiast find it much better than Mr.Bergreen's book. If you want a book on Capone and you want the facts straight get this book now!!!!!

Building and expanding upon the solid foundation previously laid by Pasley and Kobler and correcting old errors, and guided by the likes of top-notch Capone experts Mark Levell and Bill Balsamo, Schoenberg has crafted one of the best Capone biographies to date, far superior to Bergreen's ludicrous fluff. The author puts perhaps too much faith in the questionable testimony of "Born Again" hoodlum George Meyer but that is abbreviated and an almost a minor aside in this comprehensive, well-researched bio of America's all-time greatest gangster.

I have read three Al Capone biographies and this one is the best of the three. Although Lawrence Bergreen's book gets a bit more into the private life and Capone and his cronies, it also dwells too much on members of his family, especially James "2 Gun Hart" Capone. Bergreen's book is very well done, but i want more of Big Al and the Chicago Outfit his leadership spawned and Robert Schoenberg's book is the best of the bunch. I give it a slight but definite edge over Bergreen's book, and a this is a much better book then John Kobler's biography. This book is almost like a pulp fiction page turner, full of bloody beer wars, gang intrigues, and of course the overwhelming presence of The Big Guy himself and the seminal role he played in coming out on top of the underworld in Chicago, destroying or forcing into irrelevance the other prohibition gangs in Chicago, and being the founding father of the Chicago Outfit, which exists to this day as a powerful underworld force in the midwest. That Capone was able to defeat and destroy those forces arrayed against him and organize such a massive empire of crime, says much indeed for his intelligence, luck, and organizational ability, as well as his willingness to strike harder and faster then others with devastating results on his opposition. Robert Schoenberg's book tells this story best of all, and is the best page turner of all the Capone books. It was also nice for me that it did not dwell too heavily on Capone's years in prison and his precipitate physical decline, as Bergreen's book does in great detail. I prefer to read of The Big Guy on the rise and on top, then in jail and in decline. So although both books are very good this one is my favorite, and for pure Al Capone, gang war, prohibition age crime buffs this is very thrilling reading indeed. Very well done and very highly recommended.

this book gives an interesting aspect to the Capone story particularly in regard to Capone's Florida excursion. It seems Al went to Florida to escape the "heat" of Chicago but found the heat and humidity of Florida eventually put him in jail. The IRS investigated his holdings and possesions in Miami and Big Al found that all the rackets were already covered by business developers from Ohio. These snowbirds once they got a handle on Florida's vice industries weren't about to tolerate Capone and the attention he could bring to some of their more dubious business enterprises.In alot of works on Capone the writers make the point solely that there was moral outrage and this was enough for the state of Florida to want Capone out.However from the Schoenberg book read there is alot more involved in the reasons for the riddance of Capone. It seems his high profile was not welcome because it brought to much attention to the fishbowl and no respectable fish wants to be seen devouring the smaller ones.

this book really help me to know and understand a little bit better about Al Capone. when i order this book, i want to know the human capone, not only as a gangster. and when i read it, it was like dream comes true. i learn a lot about this infamous person. i love reading this book, every page of it.

The first few chapters drag as the author sets up the background to the history of the area and era, to show how the climate and local gangs were in place for Al to come into his future profession. I guess that's necessary, but the reader is waiting for Al to enter the text and then that's when it becomes interesting. One learns that prohibition was the main driving force for the rise of these gangsters, and the profits that were to be made making and distributing illegal booze. It's amazing the control that he had in his era among all walks of life and industry, and his celebrity that was later his downfall. One almost feels sorry for him in his later years when he could not be outside in pubic without being arrested on the spot by police that had orders to arrest him on sight, and also with his health problems. But, then you find that orders are still being given to remove a troublemaker and you realize this is a coldhearted killer and that he brought this on himself. The author did have a conflict in his age at his death, in which he said was 48 when he died, but Al's tombstone and the author's own notes give his birthdate and death date as 58. That's a pretty big conflict in a book on the life of a person, which I assume must have been researched throughly. I thought there should have been a little more about the time he dined three of his men who had turned on him, and then beat them senseless with a baseball bat and then had them shot at the table, as I had read of this in a bit more detail in another source. All in all, a great book on the life and times of Al Capone

I agree with most of the comments. This is definitely the best book written on Al Capone and I've read many of them, including Bergreen's and Kobler's which were also good but this one had something more. Very well written, it shows Capone's strengths and weakness in equal measure. And, where his strengths are concerned, in particular his loyalty. As this book makes clear it was his alliances, his friendships, gained from a reputation of keeping his word and from being loyal, especially as a lieutenant to Johnny Torrio, much more than fear on the part of his enemies, that earned him respect and power. Capone was a natural, very intelligent leader and in a different context might have been a great general, politician or even legitimate businessman!