A well-researched, if extremely lengthy, book that provides a solid analysis of the Kennedy assassination evidence and...
by Robert A. Wagner ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A
A researcher examines competing theories regarding the John F. Kennedy assassination and concludes that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.
In this debut history book, Wagner takes a retrospective look at the Kennedy assassination, the multiple and conflicting investigations of the death, and the perennially popular conspiracy theories that have grown out of it. The author has conducted thorough research and draws on a wide swath of the unending supply of volumes on the subject, and his book is meticulously footnoted and endnoted, with substantial excerpts of the Warren Report and other primary sources included throughout the text. The work explores key elements of the assassination itself, the subsequent autopsies, and the different conclusions reached by the Warren Commission and by the House Select Committee on Assassinations a decade later. Familiar elements of the story, from the grassy knoll to the pristine bullet to the Texas Book Depository, all play their roles in Wagner’s account. The author also explores assertions about Oswald’s past: “Oswald was no stranger to careful assassination planning…it was learned that earlier in 1963, Oswald had attempted to kill Major General Edwin Walker. General Walker had been active in right-wing causes before and after his resignation from the US Army in 1961.” While the focus on minutiae can occasionally be overwhelming, with time measured not in minutes or seconds but in frames of the Zapruder film, Wagner provides enough information to justify his arguments in favor of a single-shooter theory that does not rely on one bullet striking both Kennedy and Texas Gov. John Connally, the version of events accepted by the Warren Report. The author does not attempt to read the minds of the participants at a half-century’s remove but offers a measured appraisal of motivating factors, including the appointment of former CIA Director Allen Dulles to the Warren Commission (“Sure, the ‘retired’ Dulles may have had some time on his hands, but putting him on the inside may have been less risky than having him on the outside as a presidential commission did its work”). In clear and persuasive prose, Wagner presents a levelheaded analysis of some of the most scrutinized evidence of the 20th century, acknowledging the valid concerns raised by critics of the official reports while refraining from excessively incredulous conspiracy theories and interpretations.
A well-researched, if extremely lengthy, book that provides a solid analysis of the Kennedy assassination evidence and reports.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 490
Publisher: Dog Ear
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Robert Greene ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1998
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION | PSYCHOLOGY | HISTORICAL & MILITARY
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BOOK TO SCREEN
by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Categories: BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HOLOCAUST | HISTORY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL HISTORY
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