On the Run with Bonnie & Clyde

Receiving this book after being on the pre-order list, I can honestly say, after literally plowing through it(finding it almost impossible to stop), it was well worth the wait. I read everything I can get my hands on about the Dust Bowl, Depression crime sprees, anything to do with underbelly-American history of that time, but especially Bonnie and Clyde--and this is by far the best book on the subject. John Gilmore tells their story in a way no one else does: you are riveted right beside Bonnie and Clyde, like a constant audience to their lives, with access to their private, dark world. The book is literature. Gilmore has conjured up these people on the fringe of life--the Barrow clan in their third-world Texas destitution, desperate human driftwood like Bonnie and Clyde's associate, W.D.--as flesh-and-blood creatures, racing to their fate as if it's literally happening right now, just as you're reading it. So many of the other works on them amount to stitched-together encyclopedias of rehashed (and inaccurate) newspaper articles and clichéd myths. Gilmore, seeking also with his book to shear away the nonsense and repeated errors of earlier "histories," has produced a work that is both a reliable American history and a living, moving being. This is THE book on Bonnie and Clyde.

I read everything I can get my hands on about the Dust Bowl, Depression crime sprees, anything to do with underbelly-American history of that time, but especially Bonnie and Clyde--and this is by far the best book on the subject. John Gilmore tells their story in a way no one else does: you are riveted right beside Bonnie and Clyde, like a constant audience to their lives, with access to their private, dark world. The book is literature. Gilmore has conjured up these people on the fringe of life--the Barrow clan in their third-world Texas destitution, desperate human driftwood like Bonnie and Clyde's associate, W.D.--as flesh-and-blood creatures, racing to their fate as if it's literally happening right now, just as you're reading it. So many of the other works on them amount to stitched-together encyclopedias of rehashed (and inaccurate) newspaper articles and clichéd myths. Gilmore, seeking also with his book to shear away the nonsense and repeated errors of earlier "histories," has produced a work that is both a reliable American history and a living, moving being. This is THE book on Bonnie and Clyde.