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Capone: The Man and the Era, by Laurence Bergreen
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In this brilliant history of Prohibition and its most notorious gangster, acclaimed biographer Laurence Bergreen takes us to the gritty streets of Chicago where Al Capone forged his sinister empire.
Bergreen shows the seedy and glamorous sides of the age, the rise of Prohibition, the illicit liquor trade, the battlefield that was Chicago. Delving beyond the Capone mythology. Bergreen finds a paradox: a coldblooded killer, thief, pimp, and racketeer who was also a devoted son and father; a self-styled Robin Hood who rose to the top of organized crime. Capone is a masterful portrait of an extraordinary time and of the one man who reigned supreme over it all, Al Capone.
- Sales Rank: #652021 in eBooks
- Published on: 2013-05-21
- Released on: 2013-05-21
- Format: Kindle eBook
From Publishers Weekly
Biography of the legendary prohibition-era gangster.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
In the wake of Robert J. Schoenberg's Mr. Capone (LJ 8/92), called "the most detailed biography of Capone published to date" by LJ's reviewer, comes an even more detailed account based on extensive research and interviews. Bergreen, who has written biographies of James Agee and Irving Berlin, has "abandoned conventional assumptions of...right and wrong" in his sympathetic portrayal of the one-time Public Enemy Number One. He blames the hypocrisies of Prohibition and anti-Italian bias for creating Capone's undeserved reputation, and he is especially critical of Capone nemesis Eliot Ness. Bergreen labels the tax evasion trial that sent Capone to prison a "legalistic lynching" and tends to excuse Capone's more unsavory actions as the results of "latent neurosyphilis." However controversial, this book offers much of interest, including new information about Capone and his family. Larger crime collections will want both books.
Gregor A. Preston, Univ. of California Lib., Davis
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
People still respond to the mention of Chicago by saying, "Al Capone. Rat-a-tat-tat." But public enemy number one did not personally use the Thompson submachine gun to protect his bootlegging empire, says Bergreen, although his associates most certainly did. In fact, Bergreen sets out to dispel the hoodlum-killer aspect of Capone's career, instead focusing on the racketeer's insistence on being a businessman. For the most part, despite the Saint Valentine's Day massacre and numerous other gang killings, he succeeds. Bergreen starts out slowly, tending to blame much of Capone's later actions on a poor childhood, and concentrating on the future gangster's ostracism by fellow immigrant Irish and even Sicilians (Capone's family was Neapolitan). A side plot about a long-lost brother's becoming a Great Plains lawman is intriguing but doesn't really go anywhere, and another lawman, "untouchable" Eliot Ness, self-proclaimed Capone scourge, fares poorly; Ness is annoying to the Capone empire, but not much else. Most revealing of all are the gangster's declining years in Alcatraz, where Capone tried to teach himself to play the banjo! Bergreen's view of Capone the man is not particularly surprising otherwise, but the 1920s view of Prohibition-era Chicago is tremendously entertaining. Joe Collins
Most helpful customer reviews
22 of 27 people found the following review helpful.
no scars on this face
By John W. Cotner
This book deserves better than it has gotten; I am surprised by the vehemence of some of the reviewers' reactions to it. It offers a broad, interesting, historical view of turn of the century New York, then Chicago, early 20th century politics, prohibition, the hero-worship of the Roaring 20's, the mafia, the FBI, syphillis, Alcatraz -- a whole Ragtime-like panorama. It is entertaining and instructive. Those who pan it appear to have a problem with the somewhat sympathetic portrayal of a morally objectionable person or quibble over arcane facts.
Having lived in Lansing, Michigan and spent time in the northwoods of Wisconsin, where Al Capone summered, I can say that the legend of Al Capone is still very much alive in those two locations; he rivals George Washington for having supposedly slept or shot up more places than anyone else. The author captures this aspect of Capone's life, as well as his charismatic, sympathetic Robin Hood-like persona which humanized him and endeared him to a portion of the masses.
I wa not bothered by the diversions of attention to Al Capone's brother, Two Gun Hart and his supposed nemisis, Eliot Ness, and found them interesting and germane to Capone's life story. I had not heard of the brother before but was aware that post-Capone, Ness ended up as a police official in Cleveland. Nor was I bothered by what some call an overly-sympathetic portrayal of Capone; he has aspects that frankly are sympathetic.
What strikes me as most interesting about the author's portrayal of Al Capone is that he shows how Capone -- certainly not stupid, and trained as a bookkeeper -- was the first man to apply systematic business and financial practices to the running of the mob, and increased its bottom line. He also was either more politically astute than those gangsters who came before -- although at times, just as crude in his methods -- or was lucky enough to have blatantly corrupt, receptive mayors in Chicago and Cicero when he came to power.
The author does a good job of showing how the federal government wanted to get Al Capone in the worst way and finally figured out how to do it with the Income Tax Code. The book lays out the dogged determination and methods of the agents who persevered to nail him. In the end, given the author's somewhat sympathetic portrait of Capone, you feel sorry that he got caught, and even sorrier to learn of how he was treated by fellow inmates at Alcatraz. Most biographers seem to gravitate toward either abhorring or loving their subjects and this author is no exception, tending toward the latter.
I recommend this book. Unless you are a Capone fanatic and know all there is to know about him already, the factual presentation will not put you off. I frankly did not know if I was reading the truth or not, but it seemed like it, and it was interesting and I thought, reasonably well-written. I am curious if there is any difference in the texts or otherwise in the newer paperback edition, versus the original hardback, which is what I read.
10 of 12 people found the following review helpful.
In the end, cannot be relied upon
By M. Pitcavage
Capone: the Man and the Era, by Lawrence Bergreen, is a lengthy and extensively researched biography of Chicago gangster Al Capone, full of interesting details. Alas, all of this work has essentially been negated by the author's own credulousness and his repeated construction of edifices of the sheerest flights of fancy based on the flimsiest--or complete non-existence--of evidence. As a result, the reader is left questioning the accuracy of almost everything in the book--especially as it is not well sourced.
Let me give you some of the most egregious examples.
First, based solely on a single piece of circumstantial evidence, Bergreen decides that Al Capone was a long-term cocaine addict. The evidence? A medical examination upon his entrance into prison revealed a perforated septum, which sometimes occurs with cocaine abusers. Based solely and completely on this one fact, Bergreen not only concludes that Capone must have been a heavy user of cocaine, but he repeatedly refers throughout the book to Capone's cocaine use, even though he does not have a single eyewitness account (out of the tens of thousands of people who wrote or talked about Capone) of Capone ever, even once, taking cocaine. Now, when you realize that a number of conditions can create a perforated septum, including even "aggressive nose picking," the idea that it had to have been cocaine is simply ridiculous. By the way, apparently syphilis--which Capone infamously had--can also sometimes cause a perforated septum.
It would have been entirely justified for Bergreen to have speculated on the possibility that perhaps Capone had been a cocaine user, and left it at that. Instead, based on very poor evidence, he repeatedly states it as absolute fact.
Second, and worst of all, Bergreen comes to the conclusion that Al Capone was merely a pawn, and that the real racketeering boss in Chicago was a minor Chicago Heights mobster, Frank LaPorte. According to Bergreen, Capone was just the public face, and that it was LaPorte who gave the orders. Upon what evidence does Capone base this outrageous promotion of LaPorte (generally considered one of Capone's henchmen, though in later years, after Capone was kaput, he rose to more prominence)? ABSOLUTELY NONE. It is sheer invention, which Bergreen repeats as fact. I have read thousands of biographies and works of history, and this utter fabrication strikes me as one of the most egregious self-deluding fantasies I have ever come across. Does anybody think that if Al Capone had been taking orders from Frankie LaPorte that it could have somehow remained secret? Bergreen has no evidence on which to back up this theory, which is frankly beyond bizarre.
Third, Bergreen engages in some pretty outrageous medical determinism. It is well known that Capone developed neurosyphilis, which resulted in a significant degradation of his mental faculties from the late 1930s onward. Unfortunately, knowing some of the symptoms of neurosyphilis, Bergreen cannot restrain himself from attributing all sorts of actions and reactions on Capone's part in earlier years to the debilitating effects of this disease. He doesn't speculate that the syphilis may have played a role; time and again, he simply blatantly asserts it. This is quite unfortunate, given that the first documentable symptoms exhibited by Capone occurred only after his arrival at Alcatraz. In other words, Bergreen literally has no way of knowing at all, yet this does not even slow him down a bit.
The book is full of other, more minor examples of this same thing. Bergreen repeatedly exudes a credulousness--especially with interview subjects--that suggests no critical faculties were engaged at all. He seemingly makes no effort to confirm or deny the accounts that people tell him or that he reads (with the exception of Elliot Ness, whose overblown accounts were already very well known). As a result, he whitewashes Capone's "lost" brother, who became a crooked lawman in Nebraska, accepting a relative's account of the man as a sort of latter day hero, while other biographers have noted his bad reputation and criminality. With an infamous figure like Capone, any biographer must be doubly skeptical at accepting the accounts of people who claim to have known or interacted with him, but Bergreen left his incredulity at the door.
This is all unfortunate, for the book is well-written and does represent a lot of research. Alas, it simply cannot be relied upon. For people interested in a more reliable account of the life of Al Capone, I recommend instead Robert J. Schoenberg's "Mr. Capone."
28 of 37 people found the following review helpful.
Doesn't Do Al Justice
By Rick "Mad Dog" Mattix
If you're looking for a good in-depth study of Al Capone or the Prohibtion beer wars in Chicago, this is not the book for you. If you're looking for a biography that gets wildly sidetracked from its subject and, as an added bonus, offers questionable revisions to the Capone story, this is just the book for you. The story of Capone's "lost" brother "Two-Gun" Hart is nothing really new and Bergreen's new emphasis on him presents the family's fictional account rather than the real story. James Capone, a.k.a. "Two-Gun" Hart, was not the honest lawman Bergreen portrays him as, nor was he was a war hero. Hart lost his respected place in the community of Homer, Nebraska when his tales of wartime heroism were exposed as a sham and he could provide no proof of military service. His tough image as a "two-gun" cop resulted mostly from drunken brawls with Indians who proved tougher than he was. Bergreen devotes a third of the book to this boring fraud who makes brother Al seem, in comparison, a paragon of honesty to those who know the true facts. Another third is devoted to the colorless "Untouchable" Prohibition agent Eliot Ness, who was far less interesting than the character in the fictional TV series and movie. His story would be best told elsewhere. One section of the book deals, inaccurately, with the Depression desperadoes: Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde, Pretty Boy Floyd, etc.,--and adds nothing to the Capone story. Bergreen's report on the Thompson submachine gun, the Capone gang's trademark weapon, with its description of heavy, bruising recoil and near-impossibility to control, is a joke to anyone who's ever handled a Model 21 tommy gun. The gang wars, which should occupy center stage in a definite bio of America's most notorious mobster, are treated rather sketchily. Some other family info is way off the mark. And, on the flimsiest of evidence, Bergreen makes Capone both a pawn of the Chicago Heights mob and a cocaine addict. This is a poor excuse for a Capone biography...
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