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

I’ve always been fascinated with Bonnie & Clyde as they seemed to personify an early 20th Century Robin Hood mystique. Before the death car (34 Ford V8) went on permanent display at Whiskey Pete’s in NV I saw the car in the Chicago area as part of a traveling display. I was struck by the number of .30 06 bullet holes all over the car from many different angles and all the dried blood in the interior. They really wanted them dead, and I’ve always wondered what the real story was behind the ambush! This book answers all my questions and it is incredibly well researched! The sheer volume of details is amazing but the author does a stellar job of writing so there is nothing tedious about it at all! Honestly I couldn’t put the book down! Very highly recommended!!!

An excellent book on Bonnie and Clyde. The author obviously took his time and made sure he included facts and areas that other authors may have looked over. Highly recommended.

I have no idea of how I stumbled across "Go Down Together", but I am certainly glad I did. While I enjoy mysteries and police procedurals, I don't consider myself to be a crime buff. My experience with Bonnie and Clyde was limited largely to the classic 1967 movie and bits and pieces that I had acquired here and there. Guinn is very serious about his subjects, Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker. He fills 82 pages with notes, bibliography and acknowledgments. It was his good fortune that he secured access to two previously unpublished manuscripts by family members. Guinn acknowledges that the historical record of the infamous pair is incomplete and cluttered with lies, exaggerations, questionable recollections and much else that isn't true. Clyde and Bonnie - the way the pair was known until the movie - were children of poverty. Though most impoverished kids made it out of their West Dallas slum neighborhood without robbing a corner grocery or killing someone, Clyde Barrow didn't. Petty thefts and stealing cars became a way of life for the poor boy and he was packed off to prison. Texas wasn't a congenial state to the poor in the 1930s. (What state was?) The agricultural markets had collapsed followed by the financial markets and the economy as a whole. Social mobility wasn't what it is today: back then, if you were born poor, you generally stayed poor. Texas prisons were harsh environments and young Clyde Barrow was assigned to Eastham, a farm run from the notorious Huntsville prison. There he was continually raped by another prisoner. Clyde demonstrated his outlook on life by murdering the perpetrator. Released from prison, Clyde put together a "gang" that was incredibly inept. Clyde and his successive "Barrow Gangs" never really achieved much success. But he had one person who never left his side: perky, would be poetess Bonnie Parker. Their relationship and dedication to each other is the real subject of this story. Clyde was the boss of the "gang". Bonnie was his woman, always present, but never really a part of the actual commission of the crime. She didn't shoot anyone or even rob anyone. Unlike the movie and many stories, Guinn shows there was little glamor in the lives of these fugitives, both of whom were in their early 20s. Much of the time, they slept in primitive camps, eating Vienna sausages from cans, often cold. They were constantly on the run, always with an eye out for police, of whom they killed several without much reason, other than Clyde's not wanting to go back to prison. Clyde and Bonnie supported themselves largely through the gang's robberies of grocery and drug stores and gas stations. Occasionally the gang robbed a bank, usually without great financial success. The Depression era media played up the exploits of Clyde and Bonnie because crime news was cheap entertainment and there was more than a hint of "Robin Hood" in the story of the poor kid from the slums striking back at the capitalist class.

Do NOT buy Go Down Together by Jeff Guinn UNLESS: 1. You have sufficient time to read it cover to cover; 2. You want to learn more about the life of Clyde and Bonnie; 3. AND, you would like to understand what historically (most likely) happened. Maybe it's just me, but this book is so well put together and backed up by the best available sources that I finally get it. I bought it after reading about Frank Hamer and just could not put it down. There is no way that anyone other than Clyde and Bonnie could say what actually happened, but this author seems to have gathered enough detail to present to the reader a comprehensive representation of the most likely chain of events in a way that at the end you feel like you have just watched a movie. I think someone said earlier that it does not excuse or justify the behavior, motive, or actions of any of the parties involved and I would have to agree. Well done, Mr. Guinn. It does circle back to a desire to learn more about the life of Frank Hamer. But thats another story, isn't it.

I've got a pretty fair library on 1930s crime and this ranks right at the top. There are two things that stand out. First, it gets the facts right, as much as it is humanly possible to do so. And with Bonnie and Clyde, that's a great service, since their story was mythologized and fictionalized from day one. Second, and more unusual, is that the book places Bonnie and Clyde in their specific social and historical context. It doesn't just tell their story against the general background of the 1930s in America, but delivers an up-close look at what it meant to be poor and uneducated in West Dallas, the grim slum (almost a shantytown) that they both lived in. Guinn takes care not to excuse their crimes, but I think his reading of their story is persuasive -- that they were two people from a doomed underclass who were unable to accept the long years of misery and deprivation that would ordinarily have been their fate. He also does a good job of placing them in the context of 1930s crime -- yes, like John Dillinger they (at least occasionally) robbed banks, but they were worlds apart. Dillinger had access to a world of sophisticated criminal contacts. Many of his robberies were set-up jobs in which the banks were in on the deal. He had access to hideouts in "safe" towns like St. Paul and Hot Springs, connections to serious organized crime, doctors who could be trusted, and a whole network of highly experienced and capable confederates. Bonnie and Clyde were just two kids from the very wrong side of the tracks. They had large and loyal families, but other than that, they were pretty much on their own. They didn't know any crime kingpins, they didn't have entree to the world of "safe" cities, and they had to select their confederates from Clyde's jailhouse buddies and kids from their West Dallas neighborhood -- most of whom knew as little about crime as they did. I didn't end up rooting for Bonnie and Clyde -- they lived horribly destructive lives punctuated by murders that ultimately resulted from their own lack of sophistication (Guinn argues, fairly convincingly, that they killed mainly when cornered, but they sure got cornered a lot). The book did give me a sense of who they were as people, though, and gave me some empathy for them. They weren't stupid and they weren't crazy "thrill killers." I guess you could say their whole lives, in a way, were a response to being cornered by their poverty and marginality. Guinn also provides a great portrait of what Dallas and the American middle South were like in the 1930s. Wild and woolly. It was a much more loosely knit society in many ways. It was a world where the cops would stop chasing you at the state line (and sometimes even the county line), and where you could give a different phony name every time you got arrested and who would know...? Guinn's research, which included access to some unpublished family memoirs, really allowed him to turn two crime icons into two human figure

This is unquestionably the best-researched book on Bonnie and Clyde, especially since the author got access to 2 unpublished manuscripts by Bonnie's mother and sister. All you have to do is look at the notes in back to see all the research the author did. . . but more than that, it's a great story that grabs you a few pages in and doesn't let you go. It's VERY different from the movie, which was entertaining but had very little to do with the real story. The truth is even more fascinating. I had no idea that Clyde had been raped in jail, and his attacker was the first man he killed . . . or that Bonnie was a smart student who won writing contests in school. But they both were from a filthy West Dallas slum, and just like today, it's almost impossible to escape from your fate when the cards are stacked against you from the git-go. But they really did love each other, and in the last few chapters, when they're just barely evading the authorities and all shot up, you can't help but feel sympathy for these young killers. I know you shouldn't, but Guinn is such a good writer that you do. I loved this book.

I have studied B and C for more than 25 years and this book is hands down the best on the subject. Engagingly written, well-researched, and chock full of surprises for anyone who thinks they know the real story of these two Texas misfits.