Mr. Capone: The Real--And Complete--Story of Al Capone

by Robert J. Schoenberg

Book Overview

All I ever did was to sell beer and whiskey to our best people. All I ever did was to supply a demand that was pretty popular.

Why, the very guys that make my trade good are the ones that yell the loudest about me. Some of the leading judges use the stuff.

When I sell liquor, it's called bootlegging. When my patrons serve it on silver trays on Lake Shore Drive, it's called hospitality.

-- Al Capone

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0688128386
• ISBN13: 9780688128388
• Release Date: September 1993
• Publisher: William Morrow & Company
• Length: 504 Pages
• Weight: 1.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.2" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Mr. Schoenberg Does Mr. Capone Right!

Building and expanding upon the solid foundation previously laid by Pasley and Kobler and correcting old errors, and guided by the likes of top-notch Capone experts Mark Levell and Bill Balsamo, Schoenberg has crafted one of the best Capone biographies to date, far superior to Bergreen's ludicrous fluff. The author puts perhaps too much faith in the questionable testimony of "Born Again" hoodlum George Meyer but that is abbreviated and an almost a minor aside in this comprehensive, well-researched bio of America's all-time greatest gangster.

Outstanding

This is THE definitive biography of the world's most famous gangster. The book is exceptionally well-written, able to satisfy anyone from a casual layman to an organized crime expert. Schoenberg walks us through Capone's life, showing us why he did what he did and avoiding getting caught up in the usual myths surrounding him. The author's notes at the end of the book are extremely helpful. Most of all, Schoenberg gets almost all the dates and facts right when dealing with the events surrouning Capone's life. While I personally disagree with his take on the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, he presents this event and others like it in such a precise manner one cannot help but say positive things. Anybody seeking information about Al Capone should look no further than Mr. Capone. A few other books about him have been published in the last ten years, specifically one by Laurence Bergreen, which is a far worse book and yet has received more publicity the Schoenberg's opus. All others should be ignored. Mr. Capone is the best book ever written about Al Capone.

Brilliant!

Robert Schoenberg really did a masterful job. The way the author describes the Capone-era is breathtaking and I was pleased that he also focusses on Capone's rivals and mentor(s). Besides the enormous amount of research he did I was particularly impressed with his writing skills. His fluent and accurate style, the humour he puts into the text is simply fantastic. That's how the book earns its five stars. You read a story, not a series of facts. Schoenberg is very careful not to add to much superfluous information, something many biographers might learn from. I would say it's hard to put down, but I forced myself occasionally...so that I have something to look really forward to the following day.

Ultimate in Capone truth!

I really enjoyed this book.I enjoyed it so much, i read it three times!Blows the pants off the other books which are loaded with fiction.He also gets his dates right which to me is very important.I being an Al Capone collecting enthusiast find it much better than Mr.Bergreen's book. If you want a book on Capone and you want the facts straight get this book now!!!!!

Neither Godfather Nor Good Guy

While attending a Chicago Cubs baseball game in the spring of Depression-deepening 1930, President Herbert Hoover was viciously booed by fellow fans. A "used furniture dealer" was also in attendance that day. The same crowd lustily cheered him. His name was Alphonse Capone. Illuminating anecdotes like this make Robert J. Schoenberg's "Mr. Capone," an exhaustively researched and finely detailed record of an unlikely icon in modern U.S. history, a welcome read. Most books on organized crime bounce around the extremes of "Godfather-like" mystical adoration, gloomy conspiratorial hype or shrill partisan muckraking. Schoenberg's account, rejecting these worn approaches, is a refreshing, fascinating chronicle of a powerful person who, in his own way, played a key role in the development and direction of 20th century urban America. One of the first "leaders" to make effective use of the news media to influence public opinion, Brooklyn-born Capone and his brainchild--the turbulent, uniquely multiethnic Chicago "Outfit" (as the Mafia was termed there) reflected the radical changes the U.S. was undergoing in the postwar 1920s. Among these were its complex and contradictory ethics and morals, its violence and carefree hedonism, its strenuous attempt to assimilate and reconcile multiple ethnic groups newly arrived to these shores, a deep hunger for material "success" and social "respectability" as well as the swiftly emerging predominance of the now-familiar urban environment. All of it in the spirit of Capone's curious but favorite and oft-quoted phrase; "We don't want any trouble." However, the "trouble" that "Scarface Al" seemingly so much wanted to avoid became his own epitaph and remains a hallmark of an era that still heavily influences our society to this day. All of the popular stereotypes aside, it is the strength of "Mr. Capone" that it reminds us that the negative and lurid as well as the positive and uplifting all play a somehow vitally necessary, if often quite misunderstood, role in the continually-unfolding American experience.