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

Author: Jeff Guinn
Genre: Historical
Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2009
Pages: 480
My Rating: Highly Recommend

Go Down Together was a step outside my comfort zone and I want to continue challenging myself with new subject matter and authors.

Synopsis: Bestselling author Jeff Guinn combines exhaustive research with surprising, newly discovered material to tell the real tale of two kids from a filthy Dallas slum who fell in love and then willingly traded their lives for a brief interlude of excitement and, more important, fame. Go Down Together has it all-true romance, rebellion against authority, bullets flying, cars crashing, and, in the end, a dramatic death at the hands of a celebrity lawman.

This is the real story of Bonnie and Clyde and their troubled times, delivered with cinematic sweep by a masterful storyteller.

Review: I'm not sure why I picked this book up other than my interest in history in general and biographies/autobiographies. I was never infatuated with the story of Bonnie and Clyde, never interested in crime novels, and hadn't studied much about this particular period of time in history.

The author does a great job of setting the reader up for the story of Bonnie and Clyde by discussing their childhoods to life in a West Dallas slum. Considering I knew next to nothing about Bonnie and Clyde prior to reading this and never gave them much thought - what struck me the most was how young they were (early 20s) when they started their crime spree. Times really were desperate and they weren't content to sit by and simply "exist" and hope things would improve. Also interesting to me was the way the author referenced them - Clyde and Bonnie and not Bonnie and Clyde. The author did his research and erases the Hollywood myth that Bonnie was the brains behind the operation.

The end seemed very anticlimatic, although obviously true to life. I wish Bonnie and Clyde would have gone down swinging, but no, they were simply ambushed and Clyde defniitely never knew what hit him; Bonnie didn't have much time to ponder. I'd like to see some Bonnie and Clyde memorabilia and visit some sites/landmarks connected to them.

Also included on the middle pages of the book were photographs of Bonnie and Clyde at various points of their lives and "careers".