America 1930s. Covered in legends, glorified by Hollywood, the dashing and bloody era of gangsters. The gangs of Little Nelson, Handsome Floyd, Barkers - Karpis, Machine Gun Kelly, Bonnie and Clyde are terrorizing the entire country. Their fame is enormous. But none of them can compare with John Dillinger - a daring and elusive raider, a charming handsome man, whom ordinary Americans, exhausted by the Great Depression, perceived as a new Robin Hood. Cinema visitors began to applaud when Dillinger's face appeared in newsreels. America was gripped by “Dillingeromania” - the bank robber became more popular than President Roosevelt. Brian Barrow’s book is the first complete history of the war on crime waged by the FBI, headed by the legendary Hoover. It is based on documentary sources: materials from the FBI archives, newspaper publications of those years, eyewitness accounts.