Product Description

Lester Joseph Gillis—better known to the public and press of the 1930s as Baby Face Nelson—was one of a succession of public enemies beginning with John Dillinger and progressing to Bonnie and Clyde, Ma Barker, Machine Gun Kelly, and Pretty Boy Floyd. For decades their stories were largely myths, containing a combination of popular folklore and carefuly crafted FBI fables.

In recent years historians have generated a more factual look at the life and times of the various Depression-era desperados. Until now Baby Face Nelson has remained as enigmatic and one-dimensional as he was then, portrayed by J. Edgar Hoover and newsmen as a trigger-happy punk who looked like a choirboy and killed without a conscience. Finally the full story of his short life can be told.

Using new information that comes from the formerly classified files of the FBI, the Nelson who emerges from the pages of Baby Face Nelson: Portrait of a Public Enemy is a more paradoxical and interesting figure than one might expect. Obviously addicted to crime in his youth and evidently intoxicated with violence near the end of his life, he came from an ordinary, honest middle-class family. In a surprising departure from the gangster norm, Nelson and his wife remained fiercely devoted to one another, and between holdups they often lived a quiet domestic life with their two children and, at times, Nelson’s mother.

The main focus of this biography is on Nelson’s remarkable criminal career, from sensational bank robberies and blazing gun battles up to his death at the age of twenty-five. Many misconceptions are corrected and some of the abuses of the FBI are exposed. BIOGRAPHY ILLUSTRATED; INDEXED 6 3/8” X 9 1/4”, 480 PAGES HARDCOVER

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #666444 in Books
• Published on: 2002-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 402 pages

About the Author
STEVEN NICKEL is a freelance writer who has written for the Cleveland Plain Dealer and has appeared on NBC’s Unsolved Mysteries, A&E’s Biography, and documentaries on the Discovery Channel and the History Channel. The author of Torso, he lives in Janesville, Wisconsin. WILLIAM J. HELMER is a former senior editor at Playboy and author of The Gun that Made the Twenties Roar and Public Enemies, and the coauthor of Dillinger: The Untold Story and The Quotable Al Capone. He lives in Maquoketa, Iowa

Customer Reviews

Only Baby Face book you will ever need!
This is the one and only Baby Face book you need to read to know the truth. Do not bother with the many stereotype Nelson books-buy this and your collection is complete.

Excellent book.
This is a very well written book that will not allow you to set it down. Very detailed and descriptive with strong evidence of a very well researched book.
Really the best book I have read in many years.

A Must for any Gangster Buff
Unquestionably one of the best biographies I've read of a Depression era criminal in a long, long time. Over the years every published work about Baby Face Nelson has portrayed him as essentially nothing more than a homicidal, trigger-happy, blood-thirsty psychopath to whom killing was barely an incident in a busy criminal career. Finally, a book has hit the shelves which explores beyond the public image and into the complex character of the man himself. Baby Face was violent, tough, and possessed by an explosive temper, to be sure, but he was also street-smart, respected, and held in high esteem by many of his associates - not just a Dillinger follower, as many historians suggest. By no means do the authors attempt to whitewash Nelson's way of life or validate his terrible crimes. They do, however, provide what I believe is an honest appraisal of a man who, in addition to robbing banks and killing people, was a son, brother, husband, and father. Read this, I doubt very much you'll be disappointed.