Book Review
Rating * * * *
Author: Max Allan Collins & A. Brad Schwartz
Published: this nonfiction book was published in 2018; I listened to the unabridged audiobook (Harper Collins Audio; read by Stefan Rudnicki; 18 hours, 43 minutes)
What is the story?
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. --from Amazon.com
What type of language does it use—technical, complex, standard, or colloquial? standard and colloquial
Does the level of language make it easy or difficult for the reader to follow? very easy. This is a smoothly-written book.
Did you like this book? I did, albeit from a bestseller/consumer standpoint, more than the historian point of view.
If you could change something, what would it be? I think it's just a limitation of the audiobook format, but I lost the thread now and then given the massive "cast of characters". I needed to go back and forth between internet searches and the book at times, to re-grasp which side certain guys were on.
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| Eliot Ness |
Who stands out, among the characters? Ness, of course—an intellectually curious introvert who could fake extroversion when he had to. Frank Nitti, the logician behind the Outfit. Bugs Moran, the Northsider with a tendency to hide out when things got hot, who narrowly missed being a victim of the St. Valentine's Day Massacre.
What is your recommendation? great for fans of true crime, Chicago history, The Outfit and other connections, and of course for investigative law enforcement
5 adjectives you would use to describe this text: fast, thorough, fascinating, violent, satisfying
CAVEAT: the introduction of this book is terrible. Loudly and offensively dismissive of other works on these subjects—including the 1987 fictional feature film—that came before. There's just no need for that, especially in a book that takes itself very seriously.If any of the blog's readers decide to try the book, please just skip the self-aggrandizing intro, which isn't at all necessary to (and seriously detracts from) this work.
[book review template 5 adapted from here; the title quotation is attributed to Eliot Ness]
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