AUTHOR: Doug Palladini

FUN FACT: Vans has been holding it down for over 40 years and started making special customizaions in the early days of the company (when iD was still something that Freud talked about). Shoppers could bring their favorite fabric by the factory, and the Van Dorens would put together a pair of shoes for them that week. You can design your own Vans through the company site today.

WHY COMPLEX IS CO-SIGNING IT: While the kids are going nuts because Vans is O.G. skate, affordable, and there are about a billion colorways to choose from, this book breaks down a history of the company. History is boring, right? Author/curator Doug Palladini pre-empts your study hall whining by giving you the tales from the super heroes’ mouths. Chapters with skaters Tony Alva, Steve Caballero and John Cardiel; surfer Joel Tudor; music legends’ tales from the Warped Tour; and a photo essay on Frenchman Dimitri Coste’s crazy collection each show a facet of the company that you wouldn’t know otherwise. When it comes to reading we need a lot of pictures to look at, and this does the trick with 208 pages that include photographs by champions of the lens CR Stecyk, R. Grant Brittain, Art Brewer, and Trevor Graves.

CLICK HERE TO BUY “Vans Off The Wall: Stories of Sole from Vans Originals” FOR $25

AUTHOR: Bryan Burrough

FUN FACT: When Bonnie Parker was killed in a hail of 150 bullets alongside her boyfriend Clyde Barrow, her right hand was shot completely off!

WHY COMPLEX IS CO-SIGNING IT: Because we’re geeked up to catch the Michael Mann-directed, Johnny Depp-starring flick of the same name (in theaters next Wednesday), but we know it won’t be nearly as good as the book (unless it’s like 15 hours long, in which case, maybe we ain’t so excited to see it after all). Written by a longtime Vanity Fair contributor, PE tells the story of the 18-month crime wave in 1933-34 that birthed the FBI as we know it and gave America some of its most famous criminals: Bonnie and Clyde, John Dillinger, Machine Gun Kelly, Baby Face Nelson, Pretty Boy Floyd, and the Barker Gang…

In the midst of the Great Depression when folk were broke and everybody hated the banks (hmmm, remind anyone of a time we know?), the aforementioned group became cult heroes by criss-crossing the country robbing anything with cash and shooting at cops. Because local police had little authority to pursue suspects beyond state lines, a cross-dressing fat man named J. Edgar Hoover made a play to increase the power of his fledgling Federal Bureau of Investigations (thereby laying the groundwork for an immense amount of really serious fuckery in the ’60s and ’70s).

With the hardcover clocking in at over 550 pages, PE will herniate some disks if you carry it in your messenger bag, but the writing makes for pure brain candy with no telling details left out (including—SPOILER ALERT!—the dying words of most of the particulars). Sure, you’ve got just five full days to breeze through the whole thing before the movie opens July 1—it’s a small price to pay for being able to tell your fellow theatergoers “Well, it’s not quite right, because so-and-so was actually shot in the right eye, not the left…”

CLICK HERE TO BUY “PUBLIC ENEMIES” FOR $10.88