I'll plug the same book I was praising on another thread---the tattoo thread, to which it also had a connection.


The best book I've read in years.   And I read a lot of books--all non-fiction.

Go Down Together, by Jeff Guinn

Title comes from a poem written by Bonnie Parker predicting their end.

A sociological study of the really down and out in Texas in the 20's (farmers--including Clyde Barrow's father--who got caught in the US farm depression which hit 10 years before the official Depression:   "When World War I ended....American farmers went down to defeat with the Germans".   Totally illiterate, he wound up close to the very bottom of the economic pile, a junkman.

A dual biography of Bonnie and Clyde-- a whole long list of stuff in the movie is dead wrong (unsurprisingly).

A whodunnit, since you know it will end in bullets, but not exactly how it reached that point.

History that reads like a novel.

And on top of that, a great dry sense of humor:

"She hadn't divorced Roy, so she couldn't re-marry even if she wanted to, and besides, her boyfriend of the moment was an ordinary guy who clearly wasn't fantasy material even in Bonnie's rich imagination....And then, just like it might have happened in the movies, her tragically crippled former lover unexpectedly arrived to reclaim her. Clyde and Bonnie fell into a passionate embrace while her suddenly ex-boyfriend slunk out of the house."