THE LAWLESS DECADE

With the reedy dissonance of an early gramophone, this raw and gory chronicle of the lawless days sparked by Prohibition plays back crimes macabre, names notorious and causes celebre. While 1500 Prohibition agents tried to keep 125 million Americans temperate, Dutch Schultz, Bruno Hauptmann, Loeb and Leopold, Al Capone and Johnny Torrio wrote their names in blood across the decade's ledger; Bryan and Darrow tried the theory of evolution before the nation on a courthouse lawn in Tennessee; Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig reigned during the exile of King Alcohol and F. Scott, Fitzgerald with his Zelda squandered youth and fortune. Through blood-soaked and bullet-riddled pages move the protagonists in sensational trials and once again the Nall-Mills trial and the Snyder-Gray case are re-enacted. Illustrated with photographs of the sport world's idols and gangland's warlords, this thoroughly rakes the much of the years between the end of ""the Great War"" and the Wall Street Crash. Labor's fight for the working man, the 1920 broadcast of election returns over station KDKA, the rise of movie censorship and Lindy's flight sounded sane notes in the era which whined to a dismal close in 1929. Of marked interest to social historians and those with any interest in crime.