Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34

In Public Enemies, author Bryan Burrough strips away the thick layer of myths put out by J. Edgar Hoover's FBI to tell the full story-for the first time-of the most spectacular crime wave in American history, the two-year battle between the young Hoover and the assortment of criminals who became national icons: John Dillinger, Machine Gun Kelly, Bonnie and Clyde, Baby Face Nelson, Pretty Boy Floyd, and the Barkers. In an epic feat of storytelling and drawing on a remarkable amount of newly available material on all the major figures involved, Burrough reveals a web of interconnections within the vast American underworld and demonstrates how Hoover's G-men overcame their early fumbles to secure the FBI's rise to power.