Al Capone: His Life, Legacy, and Legend

(Paperback)

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From a National Book Award-winning biographer, the first complete life of legendary gangster Al Capone to be produced with the cooperation of his family, who provided the author with exclusive access to personal testimony and archival documents. At the height of Prohibition, Al Capone loomed large as Public Enemy Number One- his multimillion-dollar Chicago Outfit dominated organized crime, and law enforcement was powerless to stop him. But then came the fall- a legal noose tightened by the FBI, a conviction on tax evasion, a stint in 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. Our shared fascination with Capone endures in countless novels and movies, but the man behind the legend has remained a mystery. Now, through rigorous research and exclusive access to Capone's family, National Book Award-winning biographer Deirdre Bair cuts through the mythology, uncovering a complex character who was flawed and cruel but also capable of nobility. At once intimate and iconoclastic, Al Capone gives us the definitive account of a quintessentially American figure.

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. . . . Bairs 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 Caponeprovides 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 ofBlack Mass: Whitey Bulger, the FBI, and a Devils Deal

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

Karen Abbott, author ofSin in the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys, and the Battle for Americas Soul

A complete and engrossing picture of Capones life and times. Nicholas Pileggi, author ofWiseguy: Life in a Mafia Familyand screenwriter ofGoodfellasandCasino

Enticing . . . knocks it out of the park. In the hands of a master life-storyteller, Al Capones brief, explosive career seems as all-American as apple pie and sawed-off shotguns. Marion Meade, author ofBobbed 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

Author Bio

Deirdre Bairreceived the National Book Award forSamuel Beckett- A Biography. Her biographies of Simone de Beauvoir and Carl Jung were finalists for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the Simone de Beauvoir biography was chosen byThe New York Timesas a Best Book of the Year. Her biography of Anais Nin and her most recent book,Saul Steinberg- A Biography,were bothNew York TimesNotable Books. www.deirdrebairauthor.com