"In Public Enemies, Bryan Burrough strips away a layer of myths put out by J. Edgar Hoover's FBI to tell the full story 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 1933, police jurisdictions ended at state lines, the FBI was in its infancy, the highway system was spreading, fast cars and machine guns were easily available, and a good number of the thirteen million Americans who were out of work blamed the Great Depression on the banks. In short, it was a wonderful time to be a bank robber. On hand to take full advantage was a motley assortment of criminal masterminds, sociopaths, romantics, and cretins, some of whom, with a little help from J. Edgar Hoover, were to become some of the most famous criminals in American history." "When Bryan Burrough's grandfather was the mayor of Alma, Arkansas, he personally set up roadblocks to capture Bonnie and Clyde, without success. Burrough was nursed on legends of the great American crime wave of the early 1930s, and now, in his own way, he has made good on his grandfather's legacy by uncovering the truth about Bonnie and Clyde, Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson, and the other criminal figures responsible for the most extraordinary eighteen-month crime spree America has ever seen, and the truth about the FBI's sometimes bumbling efforts to stop them." "Bryan Burrough has unearthed new material on all the major figures involved, and he has pulled all the strands together into a whole, revealing many interconnections in the vast underworld ecosystem that stretched from Texas up to Minnesota: the safe houses, the plastic surgeons, the money launderers, and the cops on the take. But the real-life connections were insignificant next to the sense of connectedness J. Edgar Hoover worked to create in the mind of the American public, and when all was said and done, and John Dillinger was shot in cold blood by FBI agents outside a Chicago theater on July 22, 1934, Hoover had succeeded in using the "Great Crime Wave" to lever himself into the position of untouchable power he would occupy for almost half a century."--BOOK JACKET.