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

"A fine work of history.... Easily readable and includes much of the last two decades' new scholarship.... Go Down Together is especially good at...placing Bonnie and Clyde in context."-- Bryan Burrough, The New York Times Book Review

"Guinn cuts through the sex and gunsmoke surrounding the gangster love story of Bonnie and Clyde, and he reveals a couple of kids from the wrong side of the river who were anything but the sharpest gangsters to roam the countryside. His gritty chronicle is a welcome corrective to the affectionate portrait of the couple played by Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty in Arthur Penn's 1967 movie, Bonnie and Clyde, which told us much more about the rise of the Hollywood antihero than it did about the real-life criminals."-- J. Lynn Lunsford, The Wall Street Journal

"Go Down Together is a rollicking read, an astonishing story of perseverance in the face of hopelessness, and a perverse tale of two lovers whom only death could part.... Jeff Guinn strips away the glamour...to reveal the desperadoes as they really were.... His exhaustively researched chronicle of their misadventures seems definitive."-- Mark Dunkelman, The Providence Journal

"In his meticulously researched Go Down Together, Guinn strives -- successfully -- to set the record straight.... Guinn has deftly restored the humanity of America's best known crime couple, stripping away the Hollywood glamour and hype with the unvarnished but equally compelling truth. And flawed though they were, through his intriguing book, we still end up liking these two lost souls."-- Kathleen Krog, The Miami Herald

"The true story of Bonnie and Clyde.... Intense but fascinating...rubs the gloss from the mythos and replaces it with a patina of true grit.... Guinn succeeds marvelously in re-creating the spirit of the times, the desperation of unemployment and financial ruin. It's a zeitgeist becoming chillingly familiar today, and that gives this book a wallop."-- Jackie Loohauis-Bennett, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

"In Go Down Together, Bonnie and Clyde have their definitive biography.... A compelling narrative."-- Bryan Woolley, The Dallas Morning News

"An American masterpiece.... One of the best nonfiction books of the year.... Guinn fully fleshes out the legendary duo. The resulting portrait, though less attractive than the myth, is far more interesting and illuminating."-- John Sledge, Mobile Register (Alabama)

"This intensely readable account de-romanticizes two of America's most notorious outlaws without undermining the mystique of the Depression-era gunslingers.... With the brisk pacing of a novel, Guinn's richly detailed history will leave readers breathless until the final hail of bullets."-- Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Go Down Together casts a brilliant new light, not just on two hapless criminals but on the creation and then the devouring of the first American media darlings. Jeff Guinn is a great storyteller."-- Richard Ben Cramer, author of Joe DiMaggio: The Hero's Life

"Go Down Together is thorough, precise, beautifully written, and compulsively readable. It shines a brilliant lamp on two very unusual people, and, a bonus, it richly illuminates middle America between the wars. Completely fascinating."-- Robert B. Parker, author of the Spenser novels

Forget everything you think you know about Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker. Previous books and films, including the brilliant 1967 movie starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, have emphasized the supposed glamour of America's most notorious criminal couple, thus contributing to ongoing mythology. The real story is completely different -- and far more fascinating.

In Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde, 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. Their timing could not have been better -- the Barrow Gang pulled its first heist in 1932 when most Americans, reeling from the Great Depression, were desperate for escapist entertainment. Thanks to newsreels, true crime magazines, and new-fangled wire services that transmitted scandalous photos of Bonnie smoking a cigar to every newspaper in the nation, the Barrow Gang members almost instantly became household names on a par with Charles Lindbergh, Jack Dempsey, and Babe Ruth. In the minds of the public, they were cool, calculating bandits who robbed banks and killed cops with equal impunity.

Nothing could have been further from the truth. Clyde and Bonnie were perhaps the most inept crooks ever, and their two-year crime spree was as much a reign of error as it was of terror. Lacking the sophistication to plot robberies of big-city banks, the Barrow Gang preyed mostly on small mom-and-pop groceries and service stations. Even at that, they often came up empty-handed and were reduced to breaking into gum machines for meal money. Both were crippled, Clyde from cutting off two of his toes while in prison and Bonnie from a terrible car crash caused by Clyde's reckless driving. Constantly on the run from the law, they lived like animals, camping out in their latest stolen car, bathing in creeks, and dining on cans of cold beans and Vienna sausages. Yet theirs was a genuine love story. Their devotion to each other was as real as their overblown reputation as criminal masterminds was not.

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 hired to hunt them down. Thanks in great part to surviving Barrow and Parker family members and collectors of criminal memorabilia who provided Jeff Guinn with access to never-before-published material, we finally have the real story of Bonnie and Clyde and their troubled times, delivered with cinematic sweep and unprecedented insight by a masterful storyteller.