Read by Jonathan Hogan
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.
Download File Size:327.88 MB
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