It is December 8, 1941, the day after the Japanese attack on Peal Harbor, and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt leads a nation in crisis. He must address a joint session of Congress to ask for a declaration of war against Japan. For two years America has refused to enter World War II. Now thats over. But Roosevelt needs an armored car to transport him from the White House to Capitol Hill. According to legend, the car Roosevelt used that day was a Cadillac V-8 that had been custom-built for Scarface Al Capone. True or not, the legend is one of several points of intersection between two headline-dominating Americans:one a great president, the other an infamous mobster. Viewed side by side, their lives open a window on the first half of the twentieth century. This is a story of America, but it begins with a car.