Between 1933 and 1939, the FBI pursued an aggressive, highly publicized nationwide campaign against a succession of Depression era "public enemies," including John Dillinger, George "Baby Face" Nelson, Charles Arthur "Pretty Boy" Floyd, George "Machine Gun Kelly" Barnes, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, and the Ma Barker Gang. Bureau Director J. Edgar Hoover's successes in this crusade made him the hero of law and order in the public mind. This historical analysis reveals the agency's often illegal tactics, including torture, frame-ups, and summary executions--later expanded throughout Hoover's 48-year reign in Washington, D.C., and exposed only after his death (some say murder) in 1972.

Between 1933 and 1939, the FBI pursued an aggressive, highly publicized nationwide campaign against a succession of Depression era "public enemies," including John Dillinger, George "Baby Face" Nelson, Charles Arthur "Pretty Boy" Floyd, George "Machine Gun Kelly" Barnes, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, and the Ma Barker Gang. Bureau Director J. Edgar Hoover's successes in this crusade made him the hero of law and order in the public mind. This historical analysis reveals the agency's often illegal tactics, including torture, frame-ups, and summary executions--later expanded throughout Hoover's 48-year reign in Washington, D.C., and exposed only after his death (some say murder) in 1972.

This story of a 1933 kidnapping gone terribly wrong recreates the lawlessness of the era, and discusses how this case--followed breathlessly by the media and a fascinated public--became the first high-profile success of a fledgling FBI. 15 photos.

Gang- and drug-related inner-city violence, with its attendant epidemic of incarceration, is the defining crime problem in our country. In some neighborhoods in America, one out of every two hundred young black men is shot to death every year, and few initiatives of government and law enforcement have made much difference. But when David Kennedy, a self-taught and then-unknown criminologist, engineered the "Boston Miracle" in the mid-1990s, he pointed the way toward what few had imagined: a solution. Don't Shoot tells the story of Kennedy's long journey. Riding with beat cops, hanging with gang members, and stoop-sitting with grandmothers, Kennedy found that all parties misunderstood each other, caught in a spiral of racialized anger and distrust. He envisioned an approach in which everyone-gang members, cops, and community members-comes together in what is essentially a huge intervention. Offenders are told that the violence must stop, that even the cops want them to stay alive and out of prison, and that even their families support swift law enforcement if the violence continues. In city after city, the same miracle has followed: violence plummets, drug markets dry up, and the relationship between the police and the community is reset. This is a landmark book, chronicling a paradigm shift in how we address one of America's most shameful social problems. A riveting, page-turning read, it combines the street vérité of The Wire, the social science of Gang Leader for a Day, and the moral urgency and personal journey of Fist Stick Knife Gun. But unlike anybody else, Kennedy shows that there could be an end in sight.

The image of the FBI Special Agent, since the days of J. Edgar Hoover, has been carefully crafted as being polite, clean shaven young men and pleasantly smiling women whose hallmarks are polite words and good manners. Author Jack Owens goes behind that facade and shares the human side of the FBI. With a breezy sweep of the 30 years of his life as a Special Agent, Owens, with his remarkable wit, introduces the reader to a new type of FBI Agent- one who could appreciate the irony and humour of life and laughed and "cussed", yes "cussed", as he met those ironies and idiosyncrasies in the field in Alabama. Owens' shares his unique perspective with the reader from his early days as an FBI trainee through chasing spies, terrorists and assorted "bad guys", putting down a prison riot and setting up roadblocks for desperadoes where, occasionally, he encountered some good people too.

The G-Men rapidly nailed ruthless criminals and well-known kingpins such as John Dillinger, "Baby Face" Nelson, "Pretty Boy" Floyd, "Ma" Barker and her sons, "Machine Gun" Kelly, and "Creepy" Karpis (who was personally apprehended by Hoover).

The author describes his stint as a music teacher inside San Quentin, discussing the connections he made with inmates through music and the advice he gave his at-risk students on the outside about the harsh reality of prison life.