The Complete Public Enemy Almanac: New Facts and Features on the People, Places, and Events of the Gangster and Outlaw Era: 1920-1940
William Helmer and Rick Mattix Foreword by Rose Keefe
If American crime had a golden age, it was between 1920 and 1940 - the roller-coaster years when a rural nation became urbanized and the nineteenth century finally gave way to the twentieth. The same forces that reshaped society also changed the face of crime, and soon the Progressive movement that battled urban decay led to the unintended consequences of increased police and political corruption, drunkenness transformed from a working-class vice to a middle-class rebellion, and organized crime was established nationally.
The Complete Public Enemy Almanac is the ultimate reference book for the gangster era, with many unique features:
- A highly original and revisionist history of the period, covering the entire nation
- A unique, unmatched collection of gangster and outlaw biographies
- A full, first-ever crime chronology of the period
- Dozens of short features on everything from the shift from local to federalized law enforcement to the history of body armor and goofy schemes to deal with "motorized bandits"
- The origins and meanings of such terms as "one-way ride," "X marks the spot," "the real McCoy," "G-Man," "Public Enemy," and many more
- Innovative lists, including the Chicago Crime Commission's "body count" of gang-style murders during the period
- New light on the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, the Kansas City Massacre, the deliberate killing of Pretty Boy Floyd, the mysterious death of Baby Face Nelson, and other events
- An exhaustive bibliography (including numerous short reviews) of every true-crime book published about gangsters and outlaws of the twenties and thirties
Meticulously documented, lavishly detailed, exhaustively researched, and written with an eye for the truths that have remained largely hidden, The Complete Public Enemy Almanac pvovides a reliable source of information about the violent and lawless era of the twenties and thirties.
| RICK MATTIX, an expert on the criminal gangs of the twenties and thirties, is a prominent researcher and consultant to authors and television documentaries. The coauthor of Thompson: The American Legend and Dillinger: The Untold Story (expanded edition), and author of numerous magazine and journal articles, he lives in Bussey, Iowa.
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 | WILLIAM J. HELMER is the author of The Gun That Made the Twenties Roar and coauthor of Dillinger: The Untold Story and Baby Face Nelson. He lives in Maquoketa, Iowa. |
$28.95, Hardcover
$22.95, Paperback
ISBN-10: 1-58182-524-2 (Hardcover)
ISBN-13: 978-1-58182-524-4 (Hardcover)
ISBN-10: 1-58182-506-4 (Paperback)
ISBN-13: 978-1-58182-506-0 (Paperback)
Hardcover Currently Available
Paperback Currently Available
