Dustbowl Desperadoes: Gangsters of the Dirty '30s

Geoff Hamilton is a Killam Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of
British Columbia.

This book examines a “new breed of misanthrope”—hardscrabble
American gangsters who emerged during the post–Prohibition Depression
era. Wallace organizes his subject into 11 chapters: “John
Dillinger,” “The Roundup,” “Baby Face Nelson,” “Pretty Boy
Floyd,” “Ma Barker and Her Boys,” “Alvin ‘Old Creepy’
Karpis,” “Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow,” “Francis ‘Two
Gun” Crowley,” “Roger ‘The Terrible” Touhy,” “George
‘Machine Gun” Kelly,” and “The Kansas City Massacre.” The book
includes a number of black-and-white photographs and a short
bibliography of related reading.

This is an accessible and largely enjoyable compendium of material on
American gangsters of the 1930s. The major figures are covered in some
detail, as is the social context that produced the so-called “dustbowl
desperado.” Those interested in a popular introduction to the
emergence of one aspect of America’s increasingly notorious criminal
underworld, along with the growth of its nemesis, the Federal Bureau of
Investigation, will no doubt find this book of interest. Wallace is
especially good at describing the allure of the mythical wandering
outlaw, and in describing the grassroots popularity of his real-life
incarnations during this period. The John Dillinger chapter, and the
appearances throughout the text of the rather monstrous J. Edgar Hoover,
are especially compelling.

What sometimes makes the book a little cloying, however, is its
struggle to be entertaining. Wallace’s narrative gusto tends to stir
up a dustbowl haze of juvenile nostalgia around his subjects, producing
occasional moments of bathos: “[Pretty Boy Floyd] immediately assumed
his deadly wide-legged stance, brandishing two automatics that seemed to
appear out of nowhere.” In addition, parts of this book are very
poorly organized. The dedication of each chapter to particular figures
or events results in a good deal of annoying repetition of details,
since many of the figures worked together or led intersecting lives.