New books on JFK mark 50th anniversary of assassination
Fifty years after John Kennedy's assassination, authors continue to find him fascinating. In addition to the 40,000 books already published about Kennedy, there are a shelf's-worth of new titles, including:
• Dallas 1963 by Bill Minutaglio and Steven L. Davis (Twelve). A veteran journalist teams up with a scholar to explore the extremists, reactionaries and radicals in Dallas in the volatile months leading up to the assassination.
• The Kennedy Half-Century: The Presidency, Assassination, and Lasting Legacy of John F. Kennedy by Larry Sabato (Bloomsbury). The director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia argues that the assassination was inevitable, if not in Dallas, then someplace else.
• If Kennedy Lived: The First and Second Terms of President John F. Kennedy: An Alternate History by Jeff Greenfield (Putnam). The veteran TV analyst speculates that Kennedy would have avoided Lyndon Johnson's mistakes in Vietnam but been more cautious on civil rights.
• Where Were You? America Remembers the JFK Assassination,edited by Gus Russo and Harry Moses, foreword by Tom Brokaw (Lyons). A companion to NBC's two-hour documentary of the same name airing Nov. 22, featuring Harry Belafonte, Bill Clinton and Doris Kearns Goodwin.
• November 22, 1963: Ordinary and Extraordinary People Recall Their Reactions When They Heard the News, compiled by Jodie Elliot Hansen and Laura Hansen (Thomas Dunne). A mother and daughter collect memories of that fateful day, including those of James Michener, Bob Hope and Mary Tyler Moore.
• Top Down: A Novel of the Kennedy Assassination by Jim Lehrer (Random House). The TV journalist (who was a newspaper reporter in Dallas 50 years ago) asks what would have happened if the bubble top on the presidential limo had been up, not down.
• End of Days: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy by James L. Swanson (Morrow). The author of Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer re-creates the final days of Kennedy and Lee Harvey Oswald. Also out from Swanson: "The President Has Been Shot!" (Scholastic) for kids 12 and up.
• JFK , Conservative by Ira Stoll (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). A conservative journalist challenges the popular portrayal of Kennedy as a liberal icon.
• A Cruel and Shocking Act: The Secret History of the Kennedy Assassination by Philip Shenon (Holt). A former New York Times reporter documents how much assassination evidence was destroyed or covered up before it could reach the official investigators for the Warren Commission.
• The Accidental Victim: JFK, Lee Harvey Oswald, and the Real Target in Dallas by James Reston Jr. (Zola). A veteran author who was a speechwriter in the Kennedy adminstration concludes that Oswald acted alone, but his target was Texas Gov. John Connally, not Kennedy.
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