Al Capone Legacy

Al Capone: His Life, Legacy, and Legend is an intensely detailed biography about the infamous man who, by illegal means ran the city of Chicago throughout the decade known as the “roaring 20s”. The account begins by telling the story of Al’s parents, and how they immigrated to Brooklyn in 1895. A large influx of immigrants entered through Ellis Island in search of a better life and the Capone’s were no anomaly. Using vast amounts of detail, the author explains Mr. Capone’s stardom and his rise to infamy with a behind the scenes perspective. This novel, shows the human side of Al that is not commonly discussed. The story explains the chain of events that led to organized crime in the United States, and how unprepared our government was to battle

Being born into the rough streets of Brooklyn, his family worked hard to make ends meet as his father owned a barbershop and his mother sewed on the side. Despite the tradition of Italian immigrants, being for young men to drop out at the earliest opportunity and work for wages as contribution to the family, the Capone parents encouraged the children to stay in school and education was highly valued. Although their parents urged otherwise, Al and all of his brothers quit school early and turned to crime. Al was the only one who reached abundant success, largely due to the network he was able to establish due to his large stature. Through his affiliation with the smalltime gang the “Forty Thieves Juniors”, Al met the man who would foster him into dominance of gangland, Johnny Torrio.

Johnny Torrio was a resourceful man, as were most mob bosses, and he wasted no time in enlisting the help of the young foot soldiers in streets of Brooklyn. Between the ages of sixteen and eighteen, Al Capone quickly climbed the ranks in Torrio’s organization known as “The Outfit”. Although dealing with prostitutes most of his teenage life, Al found his first and only love the moment he saw Mary Josephine Coughlin, whom was called Mae. She was Irish and Catholic and for this reason their marriage was a controversial and strenuous

Something that Al Capone was very proud of. Although commonly regarded to as a monster in newspaper headlines, Al Capone was a tender man at heart, particularly with his wife and mother. He even wrote them songs for Mothers’ Day. Marked at one point in his life as “Public Enemy Number One”, Al was very used to hatred but desired nothing more than to be accepted. He often attended business conferences in Miami and threw lavish parties in hopes of making friends. To his dismay, the same people who accepted his courtesies would ridicule him in the press and in private. It becomes increasingly difficult to separate fact from fiction, but Al Capone’s legend sure lives on and his trademark fedora of influence, still casts its shadow over the Windy City to this