Scarface and the untouchable : Al Capone, Eliot Ness, and the battle for Chicago /

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

The new definitive history of gangster-era Chicago-a landmark work that is as riveting as a thriller.

A Chicago Public Library Best Book of the Year

"Gripping. ... Reads like a novel." --Chicago

"Revolutionizes our understanding of Al Capone and Eliot Ness." --Matthew Pearl

In 1929, thirty-year-old gangster Al Capone ruled both Chicago's underworld and its corrupt government. To a public who scorned Prohibition, "Scarface" became a local hero and national celebrity. But after the brutal St. Valentine's Day Massacre transformed Capone into "Public Enemy Number One," the federal government found an unlikely new hero in a twenty-seven-year-old Prohibition agent named Eliot Ness. Chosen to head the legendary law enforcement team known as "The Untouchables," Ness set his sights on crippling Capone's criminal empire.

Today, no underworld figure is more iconic than Al Capone and no lawman as renowned as Eliot Ness. Yet in 2016 the Chicago Tribune wrote, "Al Capone still awaits the biographer who can fully untangle, and balance, the complexities of his life," while revisionist historians have continued to misrepresent Ness and his remarkable career.

Enter Max Allan Collins and A. Brad Schwartz, a unique and vibrant writing team combining the narrative skill of a master novelist with the scholarly rigor of a trained historian. Collins is the New York Times bestselling author of the gangster classic Road to Perdition. Schwartz is a rising-star historian whose work anticipated the fake-news phenomenon.

Scarface and the Untouchable draws upon decades of primary source research--including the personal papers of Ness and his associates, newly released federal files, and long-forgotten crime magazines containing interviews with the gangsters and G-men themselves. Collins and Schwartz have recaptured a bygone bullet-ridden era while uncovering the previously unrevealed truth behind Scarface's downfall. Together they have crafted the definitive work on Capone, Ness, and the battle for Chicago.

Includes 115 photographs and a map of gangland Chicago.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Introduction: Untouchable Truth (p. xi)
• Map: Organized Crime in 1920s Chicago (p. xxi)
• Rogues' Gallery (p. xxiii)
• Prologue: St. Valentine's Day (p. 1)
• Part 1 Prairie Avenue Boys
• 1 1895-11920 (p. 13)
• 2 1850-1923 (p. 29)
• 3 1920-1925 (p. 45)
• 4 1925-1926 (p. 61)
• 5 1925-1926 (p. 73)
• 6 1926-1927 (p. 89)
• 7 1927 (p. 107)
• 8 Spring-Summer 1928 (p. 121)
• 9 Winter 1927-Summer 1928 (p. 137)
• 10 August 1928-January-1929 (p. 155)
• Part 2 Citizen Capone
• 11 January-March 1929 (p. 175)
• 12 February-October 1929 (p. 193)
• 13 May-October 1929 (p. 209)
• 14 December 1929-March 1930 (p. 227)
• 15 December 1929-April 1930 (p. 243)
• 16 March-June 1930 (p. 259)
• 17 June-August 1930 (p. 271)
• 18 June-October 1930 (p. 289)
• 19 November-December 1930 (p. 303)
• Part 3 On The Spot
• 20 December 1930-February 1931 (p. 317)
• 21 December 1930-February 1931 (p. 333)
• 22 February-May 1931 (p. 349)
• 23 Spring-Summer 1931 (p. 367)
• 24 June-July 1931 (p. 385)
• 25 Summer 1931 (p. 405)
• 26 October 1931 (p. 423)
• 27 October 1931 (p. 441)
• 28 Octobr 1931-January 1932 (p. 463)
• 29 February-May 1932 (p. 483)
• 30 1932-1934 (p. 503)
• Epilogue: The Great American City (p. 529)
• Acknowledgements: A Tip of the Fedora (p. 551)
• Note on Sources (p. 557)
• Abbreviatons (p. 559)
• Source Notes (p. 565)
• Bibliography (p. 661)
• Rogues' Gallery Credits (p. 675)
• Index (p. 677)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Publishers Weekly Review

Mystery writer Collins (The Bloody Spur) and historian Schwartz (Broadcast Hysteria) dutifully trace the lives of Al Capone (1899-1947) and his lawman nemesis, Eliot Ness (1903-1957), in Prohibition-era Chicago. Drawing on a trove of sources, including Ness's scrapbooks, the authors look at the parallel arcs of these men in the 1920s and 1930s as Capone gained notoriety and status as Chicago's greatest public enemy while Ness climbed the ranks of law enforcement to head a squad devoted to bringing Capone to justice. The general contours of this real-life drama are familiar, including the irony that Capone was eventually convicted of tax evasion, rather than the hundreds of murders he orchestrated; the authors add depth to their depiction of both men with colorful details such as the fact that, prior to becoming adversaries, Capone and Ness both lived on South Prairie Street for a period in 1923. Collins and Schwartz present a balanced view of the role of Ness in capturing Capone, which accounts such as Jonathan Eig's Get Capone (2010) and Ken Burns and Lynn Novick's documentary Prohibition (2011) have largely dismissed. The result is an informed and valuable addition to the numerous books about Capone and Ness. (Aug.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Booklist Review

Prolific genre novelist Collins teams up with historian Schwartz (author of the splendid Broadcast Hysteria: Orson Welles's War of the Worlds and the Art of Fake News, 2015) for this nonfiction portrait of legendary crime boss Al Capone and celebrated Prohibition Bureau agent Ness, who single-mindedly pursued Capone. We've seen this story, or variations of it, before, perhaps most notably in the 1987 film The Untouchables the historical inanities of which Collins can't abide but we've never seen it presented in quite this way. The authors' intent is to take two men who have been mythologized over decades, strip away the fictions that have been piled on them, and leave us with a clearer sense of the true Ness and Capone. And they succeed admirably. Collins brings all his skills as a novelist to the story, painting in bold strokes a picture of Prohibition-era Chicago, a city almost entirely under the control of Capone's criminal organization. His writing is about as far from a history text as you can imagine (the bullets shredded flesh, snapped bone, mutilated viscera, and spurted hot blood onto the cold concrete floor). Careful research combined with vivid pulp style.--David Pitt Copyright 2018 Booklist

Kirkus Book Review

A gritty dual biography reveals the underworld of crime and corruption in 1920s and '30s America.In 1923, Al Capone (1899-1947) and Eliot Ness (1903-1957) became neighbors on a residential street in Chicago. As award-winning mystery writer Collins (Executive Order, 2017, etc.) and historian Schwartz (Broadcast Hysteria: Orson Welles's War of the Worlds and the Art of Fake News, 2015, etc.) reveal, their careers soon vastly diverged. While Ness was a college student, Capone was involved in one of the city's major industries: crime. Within a few years, they would become fierce antagonists, Capone a notorious mobster, Ness a law enforcement agent focused on ferreting out bootleggers, especially Capone. By 1932, Capone had intensified into Ness' "obsession, consuming much of his time and energy." His team of agents, known as the Untouchables, became as famous in crime-fighting as Capone was in perpetrating crime. Like an urban hero, Capone was the first mobster depicted on a Time magazine cover. "He is, in his own phrase, a business man' who wears clean linen, rides in a Lincoln car, leaves acts of violence to his underlings," the magazine reported. Chicago tour buses pointed out his "old haunts." Law enforcement dubbed him "Public Enemy Number One," an epithet that became his "enduring nickname," rather than "Scarface," which he hated. Scrappy and debonair, he had risen to the status of myth, "a symbol of government ineptitude and incompetence" and "the breakdown of the rule of law." When he was finally tried for tax evasion, the courtroom attracted more than 30 journalists, including Damon Runyon. Jurors' deliberations, the authors assert, "boiled down to a question Chicagoansand so many Americanshad wrestled with through Capone's rise to infamous fortune: Was this man, this bootlegger, pimp, and killer, really all that bad?" The authors recount how Capone (the model for gangsters played by Edward G. Robinson and James Cagney) and Ness (model for Dick Tracy) took firm hold in popular culture.A fast-paced tale related with novelistic drama. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Max Allen Collins was born in 1948 in Muscatine, Iowa. He is a two-time winner of the Private Eye Writer's of America's Shamus Award for his Nathaniel Heller historical thrillers "True Detective" and "Stolen Away". Collins also wrote the Dick Tracy comic strip begining in 1977 and ending in the early 1990s. He has contributed to a number of other comics, including Batman. Collins created his first independent feature film, Mommy, following a nightmarish experience as screenwriter on the cable movie The Expert.

Collins has been contracted by DC Comics to write three tie-ins to his critically acclaimed graphic novel "The Road to Perdition", which was adapted into the feature film. Author of other such move tie-in bestsellers as "In the Line of Fire" and "Air Force One", he is also the screenwriter/director of the cult favorite suspense films "Mommie" and "Mommie's Day".

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