Product Details
Simon & Schuster, March 2009
Hardcover, 480 pages
ISBN-10: 1416557067
ISBN-13: 9781416557067
Read an Excerpt
Chapter 19
Description
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.
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Chapter 19How did you come to write this book?
Though I didn't realize it for a long time, all my books are about the way our society shapes its versions of history based on what we want to believe rather than what really happened. My plan was to write a book titled Along the Tall Tale Trail about iconic American people and places and the myths we have actively, if sometimes subconsciously, built up about them. I planned to use Bonnie and Clyde as one chapter, but the more I learned about them, the more I realized they needed to be the focus on an entire book. They really were the first celebrities created by electronic media - in a sense, Brangelina and Brittney are their cultural heirs.
"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
"This is the best Bonnie and Clyde book I've ever seen. Three-quarters of a century after their deaths, and following a multitude of contradictory accounts by surviving participants, Go Down Together still manages to lift the veil and uncover surprising new stories and details and fresh insights into both the famous outlaw lovers and the team of manhunters who brought them down. An eye-opener that will set historians and crime buffs alike talking for a long time to come."
-- Rick Mattix, coauthor of The Complete Public Enemy Almanac
"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
"Go Down Together is a richly detailed dual biography.... Guinn, a Texas-based journalist, has researched their lives and times with the kind of thoroughness generally reserved for politicians and captains of industry."
-- Allen Barra, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
"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
"Forget what you've heard or read (or seen in the laughable 1967 movie) about a glamorous young couple pulling off brilliant bank robberies, outsmarting and killing their pursuers.... Jeff Guinn relates Bonnie and Clyde's heyday of robbery and killing, their remarkable flight from justice and their grisly ending in such careful detail that you might wonder if he's making it up. He isn't. Go Down Together is the product of remarkable research through letters, diaries, memoirs, police and FBI reports, and interviews with family members. Much of the material has never been made public before."
-- Bob Simmons, The Seattle Times
"An embracing biography of the Barrow Gang that draws us in like an old wanted poster.... Not only does Guinn maintain control of the mayhem.... the author manages to humanize the characters...while inserting them into the historical context of the times."
-- Steve Bennett, San Antonio Express-News
"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)
PR Newswire, January 19, 2010
...C. Tyler (Felony & Mayhem Press) BEST FACT CRIME Columbine by Dave Cullen (Hachette Book Group - Twelve) Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde by Jeff Guinn (Simon & Schuster) The Fence: A Police Cover-Up Along ...
Shorthorn, October 22, 2009
...Book: Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde Where: Central Library’s sixth floor parlor Bonnie and Clyde weren’t quite the romantic figures that people see them ...
Journal Gazette and Times Courier, July 7, 2009
...Review by Herb Meeker, Staff Writer If you want to read how truth can be more exciting than fiction, then pick up the latest book about Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, the Depression-era gangsters. Published during the 75th anniversary of ...
St. Petersburg Times, May 15, 2009
...fame would have lasted long enough to inspire two fine books on the 75th anniversary of their death: Jeff Guinn's Go Down Together and Paul Schneider's Bonnie and Clyde. Guinn, a Texas journalist, has researched their lives and times with ...
Indianapolis Star, April 12, 2009
...By Jeff Guinn (Simon & Schuster, $27) In the 1967 movie 'Bonnie and Clyde,' the Depression-era outlaws were portrayed by Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty as a tall, glamorous couple who robbed ...
The Gazette, April 11, 2009
... Jackie Loohauis-Bennett Milwaukee Journal Sentinel 'Go Down Together: The True Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde' By Jeff Guinn The most famous outlaw couple in American history could have been 'Eleanor and Clyde.' That's not ...
Washington Post, April 10, 2009
...GO DOWN TOGETHER The True, Untold Story of Bonnie And Clyde By Jeff Guinn | Simon & Schuster. 467 pp. $27 BONNIE AND CLYDE The Lives Behind the Legend By Paul ...
Hartford Courant, March 29, 2009
...and others in the true story of Bonnie and Clyde are revealed in an exhaustively researched new book, 'Go Down Together.' Seventy-five years after the outlaws' deaths, author Jeff Guinn delivers an intense but fascinating new look at Bonnie ...
Sun-Journal, March 28, 2009
...'Go Down Together: The True Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde,' by Jeff Guinn; Simon & Schuster ($27) The most famous outlaw couple in American history could have been 'Eleanor ...
Columbia Daily Tribune, March 28, 2009
...'Go Down Together: The True Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde' by Jeff Guinn (Simon & Schuster, 480 pages) JACKIE LOOHAUIS-BENNETT Milwaukee Journal Sentinel The most famous outlaw couple in ...
Hartford Courant, March 22, 2009
...and others in the true story of Bonnie and Clyde are revealed in an exhaustively researched new book, 'Go Down Together.' Seventy-five years after the outlaws' deaths, author Jeff Guinn delivers an intense but fascinating new look at Bonnie ...
Beaufort Gazette, March 18, 2009
...Story highlights'Go Down Together: The True Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde' by Jeff Guinn; Simon & Schuster ($27) Comments (0) | 'Go Down Together: The True Untold Story of Bonnie and ...
PR inside, March 9, 2009
...biography. The 1967 movie portrayed the 1930s bank-robbing couple as a glamorous and attractive criminal duo - but Jeff Guinn's book Go Down Together offers a different take on the notiorous outlaws. He writes, '(They) were both cripples. He ...
The Times, March 7, 2009
...dodgy investment schemes, but with double-barrelled shotguns and getaway cars. Their story is very relevant right now, insists Jeff Guinn, whose new book, Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde, is published this week. ...
Seattle Times, March 7, 2009
...'Go Down Together The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde' by Jeff Guinn Simon & Schuster, 480 pp., $27 At 2 o'clock in the morning of May 22 ...
Jeff Guinn's Books
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