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Get Capone

The Secret Plot That Captured America's Most Wanted Gangster

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About The Book

The real story of how the federal government finally apprehended and convicted America’s most notorious criminal, Al Capone.

Drawing on recently discovered government documents, wiretap transcripts, and Al Capone’s handwritten personal letters, New York Times bestselling author Jonathan Eig tells the dramatic story of the rise and fall of the nation’s most infamous criminal in rich new detail.

From the moment he arrived in Chicago in 1920, Capone found himself in a world with limitless opportunity. Within a few years Capone controlled an illegal bootlegging business with annual revenue rivaling that of some of the nation’s largest corporations. Along the way he corrupted the Chicago police force and local courts while becoming one of the world’s first international celebrities. Legend credits Eliot Ness and his “Untouchables” with apprehending Capone, but Eig shows that this wasn’t so. In Get Capone, the man known as “Scarface” emerges as a complex man, doomed as much by his ego as by his vicious criminality. This is the real Al Capone.

About The Author

Photograph by Lizz Kannenberg

Jonathan Eig is a former senior special writer for The Wall Street Journal. He is the author of several books, including two highly acclaimed bestsellers, Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig and Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson’s First Season. Visit him at JonathanEig.com.

Product Details

  • Publisher: Simon & Schuster (April 12, 2011)
  • Length: 480 pages
  • ISBN13: 9781416580607

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Raves and Reviews

“Riveting. . . . Eig's book is full of fascinating details about the Windy City, as well as the rest of America in the 1920s.”
—Elizabeth Bennett, Dallas Morning News

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