Bruce Von Stiers

Alpha Books are known for such tomes as The Complete Idiots Guide to Amazing Sex and The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Prayer. But did you know that they had a whole bunch of other titles than the Idiot’s books? They have printed books on getting into college and exercising. And they have printed a book on famous bank robberies. This book is titled This Here’s A Stick-Up: The Big Bad Book of American Bank Robbery. The book was written by Duane Swierczynski.

I have been interested in bank robberies every since being a senior in high school. One of my fellow seniors got talked into robbing a bank with his older brother. The bank was only two blocks from our high school. Of course they got caught and my classmate spent the rest of our senior year in jail.

Later my interest took a different vein. My wife went to work for a regional savings and loan association. She started out as a teller at a location on a very busy street. As she worked her way up the ladder, I was always concerned about some hairball coming into the branch and trying a robbery that ends up going bad. She now has a position with the bank where she manages people who talk to customers on the phone. I can quit worrying so much now, I think.

So with these things in mind, I looked forward to reading Duane’s book about the history of bank robberies in America. I found that the book had a whole bunch of information about criminals and the institutions that they robbed. The book also had a lot of humor in it. The subject matter is not really funny but Duane put a humorous spin on quite a bit of the information in the book.

The book is set up in two parts along with an Appendix. The parts are The Men Behind The Masks and A Treasury of Bank Heists. There is also a ten page index at the back of the book. There are a total of 290 pages in the book.

The book starts out with a foreword by Paddy Mitchell, a bank robber serving time at Leavenworth. Paddy describes his brethren as “the elite of the criminal world.” He goes into a little of the mentality of the bank robber. Then the book moves onto an introduction by Duane. He insists that the book does not glorify bank robbers, but “then again, bank robbers have always had a special place in the hearts of the American public.”

Each entry of the book begins with a listing of who the robbers were, the members of their gang and the number of banks that were robbed. The estimated lifetime take of the robbers is listed along with their supposed claim to fame.

The Men Behind The Masks starts out with The Carpenters’ Hall Heisters, Isaac Davis and Thomas Cunningham, supposedly the first major bank robbers in America. Their heist took place in 1798. Then Duane moves on to more notable robbers like the James Gang, with brothers Frank and Jesse James. The entry on the James brothers takes up several pages as Duane weaves the tale of the lives of two of the most famous bank robbers in American history.

There is an occasional picture that shows up in the book. There is one of Jesse James posing with his gang and another of Bonne pointing a gun at Clyde.

Each entry also has a little additional information in a box called Cool Fact from the Vault. In the case of the James brothers segment, the Cool Fact revolves around Jesse’s nickname of Dingus.

We find out about the famous Dalton Gang whose estimated lifetime take was zero. I never really paid attention to plight of the Daltons until now, but found this segment very interesting. Then later we learn about Herman “the Baron” Lamm, whose robberies had the precision of a military operation.

Of course there is the obligatory robber types like Dillinger and Bonnie and Clyde that are written about in the book. But there are also quite a few folks that I had never even heard of before. In the latter part of the book there is a segment on the “Average Joe Bandit”. This guy was so nondescript that he eluded capture for over two years Then there was Henry Starr who got the name Bearcat by using a Stutz Bearcat automobile in the course of a bank robbery.

The second part of the book has a sections like How to Rob Banks in Three Easy Steps and Reservoir Dorks. The section on the how to rob banks shows the various elements that go into planning and carrying out a robbery. In theory anyway. And the Dorks section lists some of the most inept robberies that have ever been reported. These include a robber who lost his car keys at the bank, one who used a brick as a weapon and even someone who used one of his own deposit slips as a demand note. The second part also has a glossary of bank robbery terms that Duane calls the Stick-tionary.

This Here’s A Stick-Up brings to light some of the most famous, and most obscure, bank robberies in American history. Even though this is a serious subject, Duane has tried to interject a little bit of humor into it. He even describes how much he got into the project by thinking bad thoughts at a restaurant while eating dinner with his wife. It is not the most comprehensive book on the subject, but covers a lot of ground in less than 300 pages.

You can’t go wrong by picking up a copy of This Here’s A Stickup. It has some humor and handguns, cool robbers and bunglers. For those of you thinking of using this book as a tutorial for robbing banks, think again. All of the people listed in the book got caught.