Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde

I remember seeing a double feature, in the early 70s, that included Bonnie and Clyde and Bullitt. I liked Bullitt, especially the famous car chase but I fell hard for Bonnie and Clyde. Truly one of the great American films. I had always wanted to read more about them, but never did, outside of an occasional true crime anthology. Once I heard about [Go Down Together], I knew I had to read it and it turned out to be an excellent biography.
However, fantastic the 1967 film was, it romanticized the infamous couple, casting them as tragic folk heroes. They were anything but. They were dirt poor kids, living in West Dallas, during the depression and Clyde Barrow slid steadily into a life of crime and eventually brought Bonnie Parker, along show more for the ride. They were not daring bank robbers, but two-bit hold up thieves, with an uncanny way of escaping the law. Clyde also became a cold-blooded killer, gunning down several law enforcement officers. They were only in their early 20s when they met their infamous fate.
This was a well-researched, page-turning bio, meticulously detailing the lives of this notorious couple, their families and the lawmen that finally tracked them down. Highly recommended. show less

An excellent description of dust bowl, and depression era America. A lot of insight into the "public enemy era" which seemed to last for most of the early 30's. Bonnie and Clyde's upbringing and their early experiences are dealt with well, describing how and why they became the way that they did (ie narcissitic and fame coveting). Their actual lifestyle and experience was very different from Warren Beaty's film. It was certainly not glamorous and not comfortable. Their personal injuries are dealt with in some gruesome detail, which might be a bit much for some, but I think that anyone with an interest in fame, crime, celebrity culture (of whatever era), gangesters, gunfights and car chases is going to like this. Just don't ever, ever show more upset Mr Frank Hamer. The man who brought down Bonnie & Clyde was one of the hardest law men I've heard of. Recommended with one caveat, there is some exhaustative detail here, you must get past that, but overall, very enjoyable show less

An excellent, well-researched, meticulous account of the lives of Bonnie and Clyde. I picked this up looking for more information than the 1967 Warren Beatty/Faye Dunaway film provided, and boy did it ever deliver! This book traces both Bonnie's and Clyde's lives from birth to death and draws extensively from Barrow relatives' unpublished memoirs to provide some truth to the legend. Guinn writes well and really draws you in. The fatal ambush that killed Bonnie and Clyde is so realistically described that I came away from it feeling quite sick and a little bit sorry for them. Yes they were criminals and had killed several innocent people, but really, the carnage at the ambush site was absolutely horrific.

The book was also educational on show more a more general level. For example, I learned that Texas had a female state governor in the early 1930s, which I would not have expected. I also learned a lot about guns, understandably -- especially the Browning Automatic Rifle, a favourite of Clyde's, and a variant of the BAR called the Colt Monitor, which was put to such lethally efficient use at the ambush. And the book provided an illuminating look at life in the United States as a whole in the 1930s.

As most good biographies do, this one contains a bunch of pictures and a hefty array of endnotes. Where necessary the author has indicated the more reliable sources and any potential problems with the sources he did use; for example, when he quoted from Clyde's mom's unpublished memoir, there were no page numbers so he couldn't cite them that accurately. He didn't even know what order the sections had been written in.

I would highly recommend this book for anyone interested in the story of Bonnie and Clyde, particularly those who have seen the movie. It's a fascinating journey. show less

I read this book for my book club, so it isn't something I would normally have read. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I knew so little about Bonnie and Clyde that almost all of this book was a learning experience. I got a good feel for what the pair was really like. I feel like the research behind this book is solid, especially based on the sources listed at the end. My impression of these two young people who chose short lives of crime is much more realistic than it was before I read this book. In many ways, the press hasn't changed much since the 30s! They still write what sells, even if it is embellished.

The late 1920s and 1930s were a unique time for criminals. Law enforcement was still locally controlled and criminals could easily escape by crossing jurisdictional lines, and gangsters like Pretty Boy Floyd and John Dillinger captured the imagination of folks suffering from economic hard times, until they met their end at the hands of a posse. Clyde Barrow was a small-time car thief and robber of gas stations in the slums of West Dallas when he met Bonnie Parker at a party. They instantly formed a relationship that took them through the next several years of robbery, shoot-outs with police, living on the run, and a love/hate relationship with the press until May 23, 1934 when a posse of former Texas Rangers, Dallas police and a show more Louisiana sheriff ambushed them on a country road outside Shreveport, Louisiana. But the story could never end that simply, and the legend of Bonnie and Clyde grew out of any semblance to reality.

Jeff Guinn has put together a well-researched, well-written history of Clyde and Bonnie and the rest of the Barrow gang by going back to the source material and digging into the unpublished stories and interviews given by family members and others involved in the actual events. In doing so, he really clears away the built-up detritus from the efforts of magazines like True Crime, sensationalist books, and wildly inaccurate Hollywood productions that have clouded the actual events. For instance, the Barrow gang wasn't particularly successful as a criminals. Clyde was a pretty good car thief and could drive a mean get-away car, but he never scored more than a few thousand dollars robbing banks and lived hand-to-mouth on the run by robbing country gas stations and grocery stores. Bonnie wasn't the vicious mastermind of the gang portrayed by Faye Dunaway, but was devoted to Clyde and never to anyone's knowledge was an actual participant in a robbery or a killing. As Guinn ably demonstrates, much of what we "know" about Bonnie and Clyde is wrong.

Go Down Together is well worth the time to get a sense of what the Depression era - and the gangsters who were so prominent during that time - was really like. show less

Excellent book. The stories of the Depression-era outlaws are always fascinating, and Bonnie & Clyde are right up there in public fascination, due to the imagined romance of their lives, which it turns out was at least partly true. Bonnie & Clyde were inseparable to the end, their loyalty to one another is one of the outstanding things about them. Everything else was pretty grim. They grew up in grinding poverty, both wished for better things, small luxuries and a comfortable life, and in pursuit of these goals, almost by accident ended as criminals with a bloody death the inevitable end. It has to be remembered how young they were, neither had reached their 25th birthday when they died. This a tour de force of research, literally every show more day of the gang's life on the run is described in meticulous detail, and yet it remains an absolutely gripping read, the essential humanity of both pursued and pursuers is always present. Its warts and all, the author unflinchingly lists everyone's faults, Clyde was a control freak, Bonnie a drama queen, both coveted fame and bragged about their exploits, the lawmen chasing them bungled many times, even the final meticulously laid plan by ace crime fighter Frank Hamer was marred by rivalries within his posse and the credit-seeking of other police, but their humanity is never forgotten. This is a marvellous book, in terms of readability and sensitivity its up there with Clark Howard's Six Against The Rock, my favourite book about Depression era outlaws, its a terrific read. show less

Forget the movies, the novels that have been written about Bonnie and Clyde. Read Guinn's top notch work of nonfiction Go Down Together and you might agree that his well-researched as close as possible to the truth work is so much more exciting and rewarding than the sensationalist distortions of the media and entertainment industry.