A fun, short read (as the title suggests). The author treats his sources like literary texts, examining them more for the figurative meanings he can tease out than for the evidence they might furnish about what actually happened. Not sure if this approach is novel, but I enjoyed it. Ultimately, the book is really about the public responses to Dillinger, and particularly about what those responses can tell us about racial, class, and gender ideologies--a critical method that will be familiar to most readers. I thought his arguments about gender, and especially about the response to Anna Sage, the woman who betrays Dillinger, to be the most compelling. The class dimensions won't surprise anyone. Ends with a helpful bibliographic essay. ( )

Between mid-1933 and mid-1934, John DIllinger robbed banks across the midwest US, and in the process becoming the FBI's first Public Enemy Number One. As an Indiana farm boy, he and a friend assaulted an elderly store owner in a robbery and got sent to prison for 9 years - what turned out to be most of his adult life. His family maintained that he was generally a good kid that got a bum rap and who got turned into a hard-core criminal in prison; his actions in and out of prison suggest otherwise. While we don't really know how he got there, by the time he was released, Dillinger was hooked into the underground economy and formed a highly successful bank robbery gang. Given the times, this made him a hero for some, a villain for others. Dillinger's Wild Ride is Elliott Gorn's recounting of his short life after prison and how his legend grew.

Gorn's account is rather short, but given he's only covering a year, that's not unexpected. His writing is crisp, and he tells the story well. I especially appreciated his linking of the Depression-era economic situation with both Dillenger's story and with the various reactions to him by the authorities, the media and the average citizen. It offered a new perspective on something I'd hought a bit about before.

Recommended, but for a more in depth look at Dillinger and other contemporary outlaws like Bonnie and Clyde or Machine Gun Kelly, see Public Enemies by Bryan Burroughs. ( )