SALON

Thursday, Dec 1, 2005 11:02 AM UTC

The top five books on the Kennedy assassination

An expert's guide through the perplexing thicket of JFK assassination books.

By

Topics: Books,

The top five books on the Kennedy assassination

Readers interested in delving into the Kennedy assassination face a bewildering array of books to pick from. Here is my personal guide to the top five books on the subject, in the order I recommend reading them.

1. “Breach of Trust: How the Warren Commission Failed the Nation and Why,” by Gerald D. McKnight, University of Kansas Press, 2005.

This lucid and persuasive critique of the official version of the assassination is the best book on the subject in years. A good place to begin. (The University of Kansas Press deserves credit for making the JFK assassination an ongoing area of interest.)

2. “Not in Your Lifetime: The Definitive Book on the JFK Assassination,” by Anthony Summers, Marlowe & Com., 1998.

The subtitle is accurate. Written by the indefatigable Irish investigative reporter, who has made a specialty of shedding light on America’s darkest corners, Summers’ book (originally published as “Conspiracy” in 1980) ferrets out a wide cast of suspicious characters, a number of whom never received the legal attention they should have before they died.

3. “The Last Investigation,” by Gaeton Fonzi, Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1993.

Fonzi, a Philadelphia journalist who became one of the most aggressive investigators for the House Select Committee on Assassinations in the late 1970s, is an unsung American hero. His account of the only government investigation that came close to cracking the JFK case is fascinating and heartbreaking.

4. “Oswald and the CIA,” by John Newman, Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1995.

Newman, a University of Maryland professor who served for 20 years as a military intelligence officer, uses his national security experience to make a compelling case that accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald was a creature of U.S. intelligence, despite the CIA’s strong assertion he was not.

5. “All American Mafioso,” by Charles Rappleye and Ed Becker, Doubleday, 1991.

Rappleye, a journalist, and Becker, a former Las Vegas P.R. man who was familiar with mobsters, tell the story of one of the most fascinating Mafia figures of all, Johnny Rosselli. The key link between the underworld and the CIA, for whom he organized murder plots against Fidel Castro, Rosselli became a witness of great interest to government investigators in the 1970s. Just as he was starting to tell his story to the Church Committee, which was thought to include revelations about the Kennedy assassination, Rosselli’s dismembered body was found floating in an oil drum in the waters off Miami. “He was killed every way you can kill a man,” former Sen. Gary Hart, a Church Committee member, later recalled.

Still hungry for more? Pick up copies of “The Zapruder Film,” by David R. Wrone (another excellent title from the University of Kansas Press, 2003); “Deep Politics and the Death of JFK” (University of California Press, 1996), by one of the grand old men of the JFK research field, Berkeley professor Peter Dale Scott; “JFK, Nixon, Oliver Stone & Me” (Public Affairs, 2002), an entertaining account of Washington/Hollywood politics by a former congressional staffer named Eric Hamburg who helped guide the energy unleashed by the film “JFK” into passage of the JFK Assassination Records Collection Act — an enormous boon to researchers trying to expand our knowledge of the crime, but which has yet to be fully complied with by government agencies.

David Talbot

Salon founder David Talbot is the author of the New York Times bestseller, “Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years,” and most recently, “Season of the Witch: Enchantment, Terror and Deliverance in the City of Love.” More David Talbot.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 26 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: Chekhov's story mirrors Russia's own

Recommendations