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4.19 AVERAGE
4.19 AVERAGE
I cannot recommend this enough. Guinn’s style is fantastic and really makes you feel the breakneck pace of Bonnie and Clyde and the desperation that infused their lives.
Solid audio book that makes me want to read/hear more by the author, Jeff Guinn. If you're looking for (as the title says) the true, untold story of Bonnie and Clyde, this is where I would turn. Although I'm not sure how much of the story was truly untold.
4.5 Bonnie & Clyde have been in my vocabulary since the Warren Beatty/Faye Dunaway movie came out when I was in 7th grade and my mother wouldn't let me see it, (I finally did a few years later but the memory is hazy) I realize now all I really knew about them was that they were outlaws who killed a few people and got killed themselves in an ambush. This book was incredibly researched and detailed and surprisingly enthralling. I actually felt kinda bad when they died because you get to know them as people. I felt maybe like their relatives did about them. They may have done wrong, but they was kin! The car thefts and robberies started to seem sort of normal, it's only when someone got killed that I was reminded we were talking about criminals here. Very interesting book.
I've always found Bonnie and Clyde, as well as their story, to be incredibly fascinating. The past few years after watching multiple documentaries, I've been searching for a book that would tell their full story. I'm happy to say that this book does that and more. The story of Bonnie and Clyde is known and unknown to just about everyone. We all think we know who Bonnie and Clyde were, but in truth we were told the over glamorized version of their story, this book reveals the truth. If you have any interest in these two, I suggest picking up this book right away.
Go Down Together may be more than anyone needs to know about the criminal careers of Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker, but like any good researcher, Jeff Guinn just couldn't resist using every interesting insight he had gleaned. Guinn ferretted out new sources that correct the notion of Clyde and Bonnie as bank-robbing masterminds, using them to demonstrate that the two spent much more time aimlessly driving around the South and Southwest, knocking off small groceries and robbing gumball machines (although they were pretty successful at replenishing their arsenals at National Guard Armories). Determined to stay together to the bitter end, the two were boxed in by intractable poverty and lack of opportunity, the Depression, and a misplaced desire for glamor and fame. In the end their constant race to elude capture was anything but romantic, yet their story remains strangely compelling.
A friend recommended this one and it fit perfectly for this month’s Heroes and Villains category for my Nonfiction challenge.
The reviews of the audio edition almost made me go with the print, but my friend listened to it and enjoyed it. I listened to a sample and the narrator was fine. Once I started listening, I bumped up the speed to 1.25 and was quite comfortable listening it that way.
The book itself is quite interesting. If the only thing you know about Bonnie and Clyde is the 1967 movie with Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, then you don’t know much that’s true about Bonnie and Clyde.
I’d heard good things about Jeff Guinn’s books and after listening to this one I am positive that I will be putting his other books on my TBR list.
He provided plenty of fascinating information about both Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker as well as their extended families. The families are definitely part of the story because Clyde and Bonnie (it was never Bonnie first until Beatty’s movie put her first) made regular trips back to the Dallas, Texas area to visit their families.
I learned a lot about them and also about the men that eventually ambushed them in rural Louisiana. Once they were established in their life of crime neither Clyde nor Bonnie expected to live very long. They expected that they would be killed by law enforcement officers.
I thought this was a fascinating book. As I said the narration was fine but not anything that would make me seek out other books narrated by the same person. Listen to the sample at Audible and make your own decision regarding audio or print but if you have any interest, I do recommend the book.
The reviews of the audio edition almost made me go with the print, but my friend listened to it and enjoyed it. I listened to a sample and the narrator was fine. Once I started listening, I bumped up the speed to 1.25 and was quite comfortable listening it that way.
The book itself is quite interesting. If the only thing you know about Bonnie and Clyde is the 1967 movie with Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, then you don’t know much that’s true about Bonnie and Clyde.
I’d heard good things about Jeff Guinn’s books and after listening to this one I am positive that I will be putting his other books on my TBR list.
He provided plenty of fascinating information about both Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker as well as their extended families. The families are definitely part of the story because Clyde and Bonnie (it was never Bonnie first until Beatty’s movie put her first) made regular trips back to the Dallas, Texas area to visit their families.
I learned a lot about them and also about the men that eventually ambushed them in rural Louisiana. Once they were established in their life of crime neither Clyde nor Bonnie expected to live very long. They expected that they would be killed by law enforcement officers.
I thought this was a fascinating book. As I said the narration was fine but not anything that would make me seek out other books narrated by the same person. Listen to the sample at Audible and make your own decision regarding audio or print but if you have any interest, I do recommend the book.
What a wild and gripping ride! Jeff Guinn is SO good at presenting minute details while keeping you utterly and completely rapt. The Barrow Gang was a truly awful rotating group of criminals, and yet, you almost find yourself pulling for them. It’s an odd sensation. I knew only the obvious points going in. This was a fascinating read.
I highly recommend the audio; superb narration.
I highly recommend the audio; superb narration.
adventurous
dark
tense
fast-paced
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Guinn provided a detailed, but still fascinating account of Bonnie and Clyde’s lives. He included information about their families, associates, and the men trying to capture them. The rhetoric was a little heavy handed at times, and I think about 100 pages of repetition could probably have been cut, but I still loved it.
Much like Guinn’s book about Charles Manson this is well researched, paced and written. In fact I thought the book got better and better as it built to its climax. (Speaking of Manson there were (are?) many similarities between him (he?) and Clyde Barrow.)
I liked that the author portrayed Bonnie and Clyde as multi-faceted individuals rather than as the one-dimensional crime figures of popular American crime lore. Although Sheriff Smoot Schmid (I did not make that up) gets the keystone cops dunce treatment throughout. There are some holes in the narrative but that seems to be unavoidable due to a lack of recorded history.
If you’re from the Dallas area or your name is Erin or both I would suggest adding this to your to-read list.
I liked that the author portrayed Bonnie and Clyde as multi-faceted individuals rather than as the one-dimensional crime figures of popular American crime lore. Although Sheriff Smoot Schmid (I did not make that up) gets the keystone cops dunce treatment throughout. There are some holes in the narrative but that seems to be unavoidable due to a lack of recorded history.
If you’re from the Dallas area or your name is Erin or both I would suggest adding this to your to-read list.