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brandinh's review against another edition
4.0
stenaros's review against another edition
5.0
A great example of why people of all ages should be reading nonfiction books written for a young adult audience. From the first first sentence, this book is readable and engaging. I loved how it translated things of yesterday into today's terms. This happens most often with prices of things, but also now I know that a Model A car was approximately the same width as a Ford Focus.
Bluemnthal carefully illustrates the outlaws' story from different angles, taking time to pick through what details probably stem from legend rather than truth. The book also takes time to recognize the people who were murdered during Bonnie and Clyde's crime spree and they present their story as a complex one, rather than just a tale of bad criminals.
One small quibble. Given the attention to translating early-20th century things into modern day, I would have expected Bluemnthal to do the same thing when she mentions people's weight. Bonnie, Clyde, and their associates all grew up in extreme poverty at a time when Americans were smaller from birth to death. Currently, there is a lot of pressure for women and girls to obtain an extremely low body weight, so some context of why a historical figure weighed 81 pounds, and why that would not be the case today, would have been welcome.
Aside from that, this was another great example of the golden age of children's nonfiction we are living in.
heykellyjensen's review against another edition
Good, solid YA nonfiction from an author who is excellent at writing them.
whilhelminaharker's review against another edition
4.0
Someday they'll go down together
They'll bury them side by side
To few it will be grief, to the law a relief
But it's death for Bonnie and Clyde
I've long been fascinated by the lives of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. And as such, it's a frustration that there are so few truly unbiased accounts out there. Obviously, the families will say whatever makes them look good. The lawmen will do the same. And the fact that the most famous version, Arthur Penn's 1967 masterpiece, is an incredible movie but a not so great biopic, doesn't help matters.
This book is far from the definitive account of the lives of Bonnie and Clyde, but by taking it's time to dismantle some of the most pervasive myths about them and doing its best to compile everyone's various versions of events in a fair, level way, it reaches a deeper truth about what their lives must have been like. And it was not happy. It was sad, exhausting, lonely, and profoundly unglamorous. They lived off of pre-packaged sandwiches, slept in their car on nights they couldn't find a place to stay, and had to spend every minute of every day looking over their shoulder. Clyde was suffering from severe trauma and aftereffects from the horrors he experienced in state prison(he chopped off two of his toes to get out of hard labor in the fields - crippling him for the rest of his life - and was repeatedly raped by another inmate; who he later bludgeoned to death with a pipe and had a friend take the fall for.) Bonnie was never able to walk again after an accident ensued on the run, and either hopped on one foot or was carried by others for the rest of her life.
Again, the various conflicting accounts by former gang members, former hostages, still living family members, and still living lawmen create a Rashomon effect; there's no way to ever know exactly what happened. But by leaning into that fact and attempting to play the various accounts off of one another, while still staying brisk and enjoyable, this book is a wonderful snapshot of just what it was that made Bonnie and Clyde so appealing to a Great Depression-era pubic who read these stories on the front page of the newspaper every week, or to a modern day audience who is still digging through the rubble of their lives, trying to discover what made them tick. This book doesn't provide some grand definitive answer - but it does provide a non-judgemental look at it's subjects, and leaves readers to make up their own minds about who the legendary pair behind the photographs may really have been.