In Paul Schneider’s hands, the legend behind the daring movie that revolutionized Hollywood becomes the true story of Bonnie and Clyde. Told in the lovers’ own voices, it offers verisimilitude and drama to match Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood.
Strictly nonfiction-no dialogue or other material has been made up-and set in the dirt-poor Texas landscape that spawned the star-crossed outlaws, the brilliantly researched and dramatically crafted tale opens with a murderous jail break and ends with the ambush and shoot-out that consigned their bullet-riddled bodies to the front seat of a hopped-up getaway car.
Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow’s relationship was, at the core, a toxic combination of infatuation blended with an instinct for going too far too fast. The poetry-writing, petite Bonnie and her diminutive, gun-crazy lover (she at four feet, ten inches tall, he barely 125 pounds) drove lawmen wild, slipping the noose every single time. That is, until their infamy caught up with them in the famous ambush that literally blasted away their four years of live-action rampage in seconds. Without glamorizing the killers or vilifying the cops, this book, alive with action and high-level entertainment, provides a complete picture of America’s most famous outlaw couple and the culture that created them.

In Old Man River, Paul Schneider tells the story of the river at the center of America’s rich history-the Mississippi. Some fifteen thousand years ago, the majestic river provided Paleolithic humans with the routes by which early man began to explore the continent’s interior. Since then, the river has been the site of historical significance, from the arrival of Spanish and French explorers in the 16th century to the Civil War. George Washington fought his first battle near the river, and Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman both came to President Lincoln’s attention after their spectacular victories on the lower Mississippi.
In the 19th century, home-grown folk heroes such as Daniel Boone and the half-alligator, half-horse, Mike Fink, were creatures of the river. Mark Twain and Herman Melville led their characters down its stream in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Confidence-Man. A conduit of real-life American prowess, the Mississippi is also a river of stories and myth.
Schneider traces the history of the Mississippi from its origins in the deep geologic past to the present. Though the busiest waterway on the planet today, the Mississippi remains a paradox-a devastated product of American ingenuity, and a magnificent natural wonder.