HOGWASH! Give me a break. I think it is time folks to grow up, and face the truth. JFK deservedly had enemies, but none of them were helping Oswald when he shot JFK on November 22, 1963. Open your mind, and read Case Closed by Gerald Posner for the truth.
Let's speak the unspeakable JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters It can be torture to speak up and not be heard. James Douglass has gone through that for some 50 years, thinking that perhaps he himself was a conspiracy nut. This book will disabuse you of that compulsive tendency. Kennedy came to Korea while I was there in 1963, when anti-Communism was dogma for many Catholics. He might have died that day too: and I have imagined how it could have happened, imagining input from the Vatican, and passionate devotion to the Virgin Mary from Fatima. Look up my own new novel if you like: Douglass makes it more plausible than ever: a US Army general, a clerical enthusiast, and a hundred Jesuits. (Douglass liked it, and together we feel the torture is over at last.)
Best Book I've Read in 10 years Masterful, deep, and brilliant. When you add this great book to Peter Dale Scott's book "Deep Politics and the Death of JFK," you get an understanding of the period that is profound, nuanced, and remarkably well documented. Because of the world-changing salience of these events -- and the fundamental nature of the darker processes that drove them -- such an understanding brings readers to an unsettlingly high level of sophistication about matters where ignorance is an anxious bliss, and enlightenment is a mournful search for hope. A wonderful and inspired book.
Where we were A little wordy and repetitive, but I am staying with it, as I have not finished it. Glad to know the full story, however, on the politics of Vietnam. Startling to have it all honestly told. I was about 20 when he died. In 1964, we had no clue as to what had happened. I was having too much fun to care then.
There is room at the top of your shelf for this book. There may be only five or six books dealing with John Kennedy's assassination which not only provide a complete review of the event or new insights, but are also extremely well written. This book belongs on the top shelf with them. This brilliant history does not so much tell the reader which antagonists were against Kennedy, it allows a recognition by the reader of forces building independent of our democracy yet ostensibly within it. While some familiar witness testimony is covered again, this narrative might even have been better had these not been included. The reader's knowledge of Kennedy's shooting provides the answer--the relationships within intelligence agencies, the State Department, and foreign governments provide a vivid equation which the reader himself creates. A remarkably unique book.