A Fascinating Book
I just finished reading Where the Money Was: The Memoirs of a Bank Robber. It's about Willie Sutton, one of the most famous and successful bank robbers in American history, who robbed almost a hundred banks and broke out of jail three times.
The irony of the title is it comes from a famous quote in an interview, where a reporter asked him "Why do you keep robbing banks?" "Because that's where the money is." But according to him in the book, he never actually said that.
And it is a fascinating book. It doesn't go into much detail about the bank robberies, because why should it? Most of the plans actually were fairly simple, he'd disguise himself as a cop or Fedex guy or something and get into the bank when there was just one person there, before it opened, then corral the other employees as they came in and convince the manager to open the safe, then walk out. He comes off as a real gentleman bank robber. Sure, it's his autobiography, so he'd have every reason to make himself look good, but it's still fascinating.
The other thing, though? Most of the book is about being in jail. He spent like thirty years in jail all told, the chapter about one of the escape plans skips over several years. He spent all of World War II in jail. He finally got out of jail thanks to a lot of legal wrangling on Christmas Eve, 1969. But the parts about jail are fascinating in themselves. Especially the kinds of hellholes some of them were, and reading him talking about the changes that came to the prisons in the times he was there. The whole book was completely interesting, and gave me all sorts of ideas.
The irony of the title is it comes from a famous quote in an interview, where a reporter asked him "Why do you keep robbing banks?" "Because that's where the money is." But according to him in the book, he never actually said that.
And it is a fascinating book. It doesn't go into much detail about the bank robberies, because why should it? Most of the plans actually were fairly simple, he'd disguise himself as a cop or Fedex guy or something and get into the bank when there was just one person there, before it opened, then corral the other employees as they came in and convince the manager to open the safe, then walk out. He comes off as a real gentleman bank robber. Sure, it's his autobiography, so he'd have every reason to make himself look good, but it's still fascinating.
The other thing, though? Most of the book is about being in jail. He spent like thirty years in jail all told, the chapter about one of the escape plans skips over several years. He spent all of World War II in jail. He finally got out of jail thanks to a lot of legal wrangling on Christmas Eve, 1969. But the parts about jail are fascinating in themselves. Especially the kinds of hellholes some of them were, and reading him talking about the changes that came to the prisons in the times he was there. The whole book was completely interesting, and gave me all sorts of ideas.