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

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9780688128388

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Reviews

In [this] fascinating if unsettling book...[Schoenberg] shuns the lurid approach of previous Capone biographers and instead portrays the mob leader as 'a businessman of crime' who took chaotic underworld enterprises like bootlegging, prostitution and gambling and put them on a rational business basis. -- The New York Times [Schoenberg makes] Capone real again, rescuing his reputation from the Hollywood mythmakers....Schoenberg's Al Capone is far more human, complex and worthy of attention than the one-dimensional myth. -- Chicago Sun-Times Schoenberg has done massive research....There are rich descriptions of many of the apocalyptic events of the roaring Chicago '20s. -- Los Angeles Times Book Review Shoenberg has done a masterful job of research and has clearly come up with the definitive biography of one of America's most colorful gangsters. -- The Detroit News Shoenberg states that his book is 'an attempt to demonstrate why [Capone] did what he did, how things looked to him, what led to his decisions.' . . . For the most part, readers of Mr. Capone will simply revel in the old stories of 'beer killings, ' as Chicago police captain John Stege called them, and savor any new tidbits. -- Chicago Tribune Written with style and verve . . . Even where Mr. Schoenberg lays to rest favorite tall tales, the true accounts are usually even more fascinating. -- The Washington Times

Author Information

Robert J. Shoenberg, a former advertising executive, is the author or two other books, including Geneen, a much-praised biography of ITT founder Harold Green.

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