Download or read book Life and Death of Pretty Boy Floyd written by Jeffery S. King and published by Kent State University Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Charles Arthur Floyd, aka Pretty Boy Floyd (1904-1934), was one of the last so-called Robin Hood outlaws. He engaged in numerous bank-robbing exploits across the Midwest until federal agents and local police shot him down near East Liverpool, Ohio, on October 22, 1934. This detailed account of his life, crimes and death makes extensive use of FBI reports, government records, local newspapers and contemporary journalistic accounts.
Download or read book Pretty Boy The Life and Times of Charles Arthur Floyd written by Michael Wallis and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2011-07-18 with total page 505 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This engaging biography exactly and vividly catches the tone of a region, a time, and a man."—Larry McMurtry From the best-selling author of Billy the Kid and Route 66, a true-life story of a notorious outlaw that magnificently re-creates the vanished, impoverished world of Dust Bowl America. Michael Wallis evokes the hard times of the era as he follows the life of Charles "Pretty Boy" Floyd from his coming of age, when there were no jobs and no food, to his descent into a life of petty crime, bootlegging, murder, and prison. Before long he was one of the FBI's original "public enemies." After a series of spectacular bank robberies he was slain in an Ohio field in 1934 at the age of thirty. Pretty Boy is social history at its best, portraying, with a sweeping style, the larger story of the hardscrabble farmers whose lives were so intolerably shattered by the Depression.
Download or read book Pretty Boy Floyd written by Larry McMurtry and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-06-01 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The time is 1925. The place, St. Louis, Missouri. Charley Floyd, a good-looking, sweet-smiling country boy from Oklahoma, is about to rob his first armored car. Written by Pulitzer Prize–winner Larry McMurtry and his writing partner, Diana Ossana, Pretty Boy Floyd traces the wild career of the legendary American folk hero Charley Floyd, a young man so charming that it's hard not to like him, even as he's robbing you at gunpoint. From the bank heists and shootings that make him Public Enemy Number One to the women who love him, from the glamour-hungry nation that worships him to the G-men who track Charley down, Pretty Boy Floyd is both a richly comic masterpiece and an American tragedy about the price of fame and the corruption of innocence.
Download or read book The Life and Death of Pretty Boy Floyd written by Jeffery S. King and published by . This book was released on 2005-10 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jeffery King's entertaining biography of the Public Enemy Number One of 1934 is a piece of historical detective work that is scholarly as well as gripping. He not only relates Floyd's life & career from youth to death from lawmen's bullets, but chronicles the many crimes in which he took part or masterminded. King brings us back to the days of John Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson, & Ma Barker & her boys. Amidst these robbin' hoods, Floyd was seen as Robin Hood . . . . Like a populist politician, he convinced others & perhaps himself that he was, after all, only robbing the big money guys & that he loved the poor. King's story, based mainly on FBI files & contemporary newspaper accounts, moves along like a well-maintained getaway car. Black & white photos.
Download or read book Pretty Boy Floyd The Notorious Life and Death of the Depression Era Outlaw written by Charles River Editors and published by Independently Published. This book was released on 2019-02-26 with total page 88 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *Includes pictures *Includes contemporary accounts *Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading "If you'll gather 'round me, children, a story I will tell'Bout Pretty Boy Floyd, an Outlaw, Oklahoma knew him well." - Woody Guthrie, "The Ballad of Pretty Boy Floyd" (1939) November 1, 1932 was a fine autumn day in the sleepy, cotton-farming city of Sallisaw, Oklahoma, the heart of Sequoyah County. The blinding rays of the midday sun were shining their brightest, but the otherwise blistering heat was offset by a brisk breeze. These were ideal conditions for a Tuesday, a seemingly pedestrian day of the week, but what was unfolding in the Sallisaw State Bank was anything but ordinary. At first glance, it would seem as if a traveling carnival or a homegrown celebrity had come to town. The sidewalks of the city bank and its surrounding establishments were teeming with locals, generations of families, young lovebirds, and clusters of friends. Indeed, they had convened to witness a spectacle, albeit one of an entirely different sort. The doors of the Sallisaw State Bank swung open with a resounding bang, signaling the start of the show. Out staggered a pair of thieves, each toting bulging sacks of bills and coins and glinting Colt .45s. The hogtied tellers inside the bank desperately wriggled across the floor to voice their distress, craning their necks and directing their muffled screams towards the open door. One had even managed to squirm out of his gag and was calling out to the crowd across the street for help. Unfortunately, his cries were negated, not by the spectators' own cries of alarm, but by thunderous applause, supplemented by whoops, whistles, and a constellation of waving handkerchiefs. Some of those who cleared the path for the robbers' getaway car were supposedly patrons present in the establishment during the stick-up itself. The ringleader, a striking young gentleman with a square jaw, a smoldering squint, and dark hair slicked back with scented pomade, acknowledged his admirers with a quick nod before ducking into the running vehicle. According to local lore, quite a few of the spectators had been briefed on the robbery beforehand by none other than the ringleader himself. So bold was he in his endeavors that he strolled into the bank's neighboring establishments in the days prior and simply asked its proprietors to refrain from ringing the cops, to which they gladly agreed. He even left those complicit with enough time to extract their savings from the bank. The dashing ringleader, hailed by many as the "Robin Hood of Cookson Hills," was none other than Pretty Boy Floyd, a perplexing character as abhorred as he was revered. To the feds, Pretty Boy Floyd was a venomous, manipulative scoundrel who was egregiously lionized as an anti-hero with a heart of gold. A career bank robber supposedly associated with up to 40 bank robberies, his face would soon be plastered on the 1934 poster of the FBI's Most Wanted alongside John Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson, and Alvin Karper. He was also implicated in multiple murders, yet Pretty Boy Floyd's admirers have been willing to overlook these crimes, with some even providing justifications for his behavior and contending that he was unfairly vilified for fighting an unjust system. To them, he was singled out as a scapegoat, and he used that angle himself, once noting, "I guess I've been accused of everything that has happened, except the kidnapping of the Lindbergh child, last spring." As this all suggests, it is virtually impossible to assemble a thoroughly objective profile of the outlaw more than 80 years after his life of crime.
Download or read book Public Enemies written by Bryan Burrough and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2009-04-29 with total page 644 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Public Enemies, bestselling author Bryan Burrough strips away the thick layer of myths put out by J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI to tell the full story—for the first time—of the most spectacular crime wave in American history, the two-year battle between the young Hoover and the assortment of criminals who became national icons: John Dillinger, Machine Gun Kelly, Bonnie and Clyde, Baby Face Nelson, Pretty Boy Floyd, and the Barkers. In an epic feat of storytelling and drawing on a remarkable amount of newly available material on all the major figures involved, Burrough reveals a web of interconnections within the vast American underworld and demonstrates how Hoover’s G-men overcame their early fumbles to secure the FBI’s rise to power.
Download or read book Baby Face Nelson written by Steven Nickel and published by Cumberland House Publishing. This book was released on 2002 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using new information that comes from the formerly classified files of the FBI, this book tells the full story of the remarkable criminal career of Baby Face Nelson. Illustrations.
Download or read book Charles Pretty Boy Floyd written by Maria Wheeler-Hughes and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 151 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the period between 1932 and 1934, it is believed that Charles Arthur “Pretty Boy” Floyd gained support from a large portion of the American public. This support is believed to be a result of the frequency in which articles relating to him appeared in contemporary newspaper and the subsequent sources relating to Floyd in the years after his death. This thesis intends to illustrate how the myth surrounding Floyd was shaped and driven by a narrative produced by the contemporary newspaper coverage of his exploits during his life. The popular support for Floyd was a result of these newspapers constructing an outlaw-hero myth surrounding Floyd and his actions during his life. Along with contemporary newspaper accounts of Floyd, there has also been a number of representations and interpretations through other media forms, such as music and novels, which were produced after Floyd’s death. These additional media examples show how the outlaw-hero myth, constructed during Floyd’s life, continued relatively unchanged after Floyd’s death. In order to showcase what about the contemporary newspaper accounts, and the subsequent sources, facilitated the myth of Floyd as an outlaw-hero, the ideas presented by folklorist Richard Meyer in his definition and construction of an outlawhero has been called upon. Using Meyer’s twelve elements this thesis has analysed both contemporary newspapers such as the New York Times, The Washington Post and the East Liverpool Review, as well as cultural sources such and Woody Guthrie’s ballad, Pretty Boy Floyd, the novel The Grapes of Wrath and Pretty Boy Floyd a novel. This thesis identifies how the narrative constructed around Floyd’s life and his actions became that of an outlaw-hero, both in life and death.
Download or read book Dillinger s Wild Ride written by Elliott J. Gorn and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-09-29 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Dillinger was one of the most famous and flamboyant celebrity outlaws, and this book illuminates the significnace of his tremendous fame and the endurance of his legacy of crime and violence, and the transformation of America during the Great Depression.
Download or read book John Dillinger written by Dary Matera and published by Da Capo Press. This book was released on 2005-05-20 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Dillinger is an adrenaline-fueled narrative that reignites America's fascination with the suave and deadly desperado who became the FBI's first Public Enemy, whose story—until now—has been riddled with rumors and fiction. Dillinger and his bank-robbing gang cut a criminal swath never to be equaled, thrilling a nation in the throes of the Great Depression. When caught, Dillinger staged one of the most harrowing prison escapes imaginable—only to finally be betrayed by the infamous "Lady in Red." John Dillinger brings to light bank robberies never before reported; detailed plans for major crimes that Dillinger nearly implemented; the revelation that the Lady in Red was actually a police plant; and the startling motives behind John Dillinger's execution by rogue FBI agents. With access to the thousands of sources collected in the world's foremost Dillinger archives—including dozens of photographs—New York Times bestselling author Matera describes every robbery, shoot-out, and prison escape as though he had choreographed them himself.
Download or read book Public Enemy Number One Pretty Boy Floyd written by Sue L. Hamilton and published by ABDO & Daughters. This book was released on 1989 with total page 38 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An account of the bank robberies and killings by "Pretty Boy" Floyd and his death by FBI agents.
Download or read book The Lost City of Z written by David Grann and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2010-01-26 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the author of Killers of the Flower Moon comes a masterpiece of narrative nonfiction that unravels the greatest exploration mystery of the twentieth century—the story of the legendary British explorer who ventured into the Amazon jungle in search of a fabled civilization and never returned. “Suspenseful…rollicking.” —The New York Times In 1925, Percy Fawcett went into the Amazon jungle, in search of a fabled civilization. He never returned. Over the years countless perished trying to find evidence of his party and the place he called “The Lost City of Z.” In this masterpiece, journalist David Grann interweaves the spellbinding stories of Fawcett’s quest for “Z” and his own journey into the deadly jungle. Look for David Grann’s new book, The Wager, coming in April 2023!
Download or read book Sutton written by J. R. Moehringer and published by Hachette Books. This book was released on 2012-09-25 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "What Hilary Mantel did for Thomas Cromwell and Paula McLain for Hadley Hemingway . . . Moehringer does for bank robber Willie Sutton" in this fascinating biographical novel of America's most successful bank robber (Newsday). Willie Sutton was born in the Irish slums of Brooklyn in 1901, and he came of age at a time when banks were out of control. Sutton saw only one way out and only one way to win the girl of his dreams. So began the career of America's most successful bank robber. During three decades Sutton became so good at breaking into banks, the FBI put him on its first-ever Most Wanted List. But the public rooted for the criminal who never fired a shot, and when Sutton was finally caught for good, crowds at the jail chanted his name. In J.R. Moehringer's retelling, it was more than need or rage that drove Sutton. It was his first love. And when he finally walked free -- a surprise pardon on Christmas Eve, 1969 -- he immediately set out to find her. "Electrifying." --Booklist (starred) "Thoroughly absorbing . . . Filled with vibrant and colorful re-creations of not one but several times in the American past." --Kevin Baker, author of Strivers Row "[J.R. Moehringer] has found an historical subject equal to his vivid imagination, gimlet journalistic eye, and pitch-perfect ear for dialogue. By turns suspenseful, funny, romantic, and sad--in short, a book you won't be able to put down." --John Burnham Schwartz, author of Reservation Road and The Commoner
Download or read book A Good Bunch of Men written by Danny R. Smith and published by Dickie Floyd Novels. This book was released on 2018-07-20 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dead prostitutes can seem like part of the landscape in South Los Angeles. What, then, could render two veteran homicide detectives speechless as they stand over their latest victim? Tightly-wound Dickie Jones and his smart and cocky partner, Matt
Download or read book The Vendetta written by Alston Purvis and published by Public Affairs. This book was released on 2005-10-10 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: His son tells the life story of Melvin Purvis, once an iconic G-man and public hero, who was destroyed not by the famous villains of the 1930s but by the jealousy of his boss, J. Edgar Hoover.
Download or read book Down and Dirty written by Sandra Hill and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2007 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Punished for an indiscretion, Navy SEAL and single father Zachary Floyd, a world-class player nicknamed Pretty Boy, must teach a new SEAL-like program for females and is mystified when one of his students, a tall, beautiful, and muscular Norsewoman fleeing a nunnery, her father, and the eleventh century, rejects his advances. Original.
Download or read book Otto Wood the Bandit written by Trevor McKenzie and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2021-08-17 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Legions of bluegrass fans know the name Otto Wood (1893–1930) from a ballad made popular by Doc Watson, telling the story of Wood's crimes and violent death. However, few know the history of this Appalachian figure beyond the larger-than-life version heard in song. Trevor McKenzie reconstructs Wood's life, tracing how a Wilkes County juvenile delinquent became a celebrated folk hero. Throughout his short life, Wood was jailed for numerous offenses, stole countless automobiles, lost his left hand, and made eleven escapes from five state penitentiaries, including four from the North Carolina State Prison after a 1923 murder conviction. An early master of controlling his own narrative in the media, Wood appealed to the North Carolina public as a misunderstood, clever antihero. In 1930, after a final jailbreak, police killed Wood in a shootout. The ballad bearing his name first appeared less than a year later. Using reports of Wood's exploits from contemporary newspapers, his self-published autobiography, prison records, and other primary sources, Trevor McKenzie uses this colorful story to offer a new way to understand North Carolina—and arguably the South as a whole—during this era of American history.
