Al Capone

His Life, Legacy, and Legend

By: Deirdre Bair

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Paperback | 15 November 2017

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416 Pages

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20.2 x 13.4 x 2.1

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From his heyday to the present moment, Al Capone-Public Enemy Number One-has gripped popular imagination. Rising from humble Brooklyn roots, Capone went on to become the most infamous gangster in American history. At the height of Prohibition, his multimillion-dollar Chicago bootlegging, prostitution, and gambling operation dominated the organized-crime scene. His competition with rival gangs was brutally violent, a long-running war that crested with the shocking St. Valentine's Day Massacre of 1929. Law enforcement and the media elite seemed powerless to stop the growth of his empire. And then the fall- a legal noose tightened by the FBI, a conviction on tax evasion, Alcatraz. After his release he returned to his family in Miami a much diminished man, living quietly until the ravages of his neurosyphilis took their final toll. But the slick mobster persona endures, immortalized in countless novels and movies. The true flesh-and-blood man behind the legend has long remained a mystery. Unscrupulous newspaper accounts and Capone's own tall tales perpetuated his mystique, but through dogged research Deirdre Bair debunks the most outrageous of these myths. With the help of Capone's descendants, she discovers his essential humanity, uncovering a complex character that was flawed and sometimes cruel but also capable of nobility. And while revealing the private Al Capone, a genuine family man as remembered by those who knew him best, Bair relates how his descendants have borne his weighty legacy. Rigorous and intimate, Al Capone provides new answers to the enduring questions about this fascinating figure, who was equal parts charismatic gangster, devoted patriarch, and calculating monster.

From the Hardcover edition.

Industry Reviews

"An engaging biography that debunks many, many myths." --San Francisco Chronicle

"Offers a new history of Capone, and separates fact from fiction in the process. . . . Bair's Capone is powerfully human." --Smithsonian

"Compelling reading." --Chicago Tribune

"Bair discovers a rich trove of legends. . . . [She] is a wise and often iconoclastic guide through Capone mythology." --The New York Times Book Review

"Al Capone provides tremendous insight into the man who, decades after his death, may be the best-known Chicagoan of all time." --St. Louis Post-Dispatch

"Dispel[s] many of the myths that have long swirled around Al 'Scarface' Capone." --The New York Post

"[Bair] has succeeded in giving the real 'Scarface' the literary legacy his life and story richly deserve." --Houston Press

"An intimate, psychologically astute, and richly embroidered biography of the most famous criminal in American history." --Dick Lehr, coauthor of Black Mass: Whitey Bulger, the FBI, and a Devil's Deal

"Beautifully researched and immensely readable . . . Reveal[s] a consistently surprising and exquisitely complex portrait of the man behind the legend."

--Karen Abbott, author of Sin in the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys, and the Battle for America's Soul

"A complete and engrossing picture of Capone's life and times." --Nicholas Pileggi, author of Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family and screenwriter of Goodfellas and Casino

"Enticing . . . knocks it out of the park. In the hands of a master life-storyteller, Al Capone's brief, explosive career seems as all-American as apple pie and sawed-off shotguns." --Marion Meade, author of Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin: Writers Running Wild in the Twenties

"A definitive biography of 'Public Enemy #1'. . . . Bair has written perhaps the last word on Capone. Highly recommended." --Library Journal

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