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The first American bank robberies were crude affairs; fumbling, improvised attempts to wrest cash from downtown vaults. That all changed with George Leslie, the prime mover in J. North Conway's King of Heists. Leslie was no inside job bungler; he was a polished Gilded Age gentleman, the brilliant, successful architect son of a prominent Cincinnati brewer. Like his table manners, his bank work was meticulous: He spent three years planning the 1878 Manhattan Savings Institution robbery, the crown jewel of all his heists. This masterful break-in netted nearly three million dollars in cash and securities, approximately $50 million in today's currency, making it the most lucrative bank theft in history. But, as Conway notes, Leslie was no one-shot wonder; in the decade before the Manhattan Savings heist, he and his gang were responsible for eighty percent of the bank robberies in the country. More startling yet, Leslie never spent a day in jail. King of Heists presents this notorious criminal as a captivating antihero, an enigmatic robber who dared to steal from the robber barons.