Brilliant ! | Four Days in November: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy

"Some day you'll hang your heads in shame...My son [may be] the unsung hero of this episode."--Marguerite, Oswald's mother | Four Days in November: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy | Vincent Bugliosi

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	• Four Days in November: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy Vincent Bugliosi W. W. Norton, 2008 - 704 pages average customer review:based on 6 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

This Book Was Enough to End Any Conspiracy Silliness

I really wasn't interested in reading anymore about the Kennedy assassination by the time RECLAIMING HISTORY was released...but then I found out Vincent Bugliosi wrote it. And he spent 20 years writing it. After reading HELTER SKELTER and then his take on the O.J. Simpson trial in OUTRAGE (both incredible reads, btw), I was suddenly very interested in whatever he had to say.

By the time I'd finished reading the first section of RECLAIMING HISTORY (which is what has been released as FOUR DAYS IN NOVEMBER), I realized that Lee Harvey Oswald did it. And he did it alone.

After spending my entire life believing that some dark and sinister conspiracy was at work that day in Dallas, I was ready to let all of that crazy paranoia go. I had a suspicion that Oswald did the shooting since I work with rifles for my job. I had to qualify at targets at 100 yards with a iron sight for years. While watching a show about the assassination, I found out the distance from the book depository window to the limo was about 88 yards. "That's it?" I thought. And Oswald had a scope. Almost all of the shows on the History Channel and Discovery have also found dismissed a lot of conspiracy details as well.

But reading Bugliosi has convinced me. While the conspiracy nutjobs (and their devotion to their delusions is crazy) continue their death grip on shadows and theories and unproven, undocumented fantasies, Bugliosi deals in facts and records.

And so much of FOUR DAYS IN NOVEMBER was news to me. I'm sure it will be with you as well. Open your mind and take a look. Honestly, it won't hurt.

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Brilliant !

Given that this book is essentially covered by the reviews of its primary source "Reclaiming History" from which it is extracted, I can only reiterate the majority view here that this book is well worth reading - especially if you have not the time for the 1700 pages plus of the aforementioned RH. That said Four Days in November is still in itself a comprehensive study of the events of the weekend of November 1963 and stands alone as fine and thoroughly researched counter view to the hundreds of pro conspiracy books written on this subject.

What struck me most about this book are the many (some 25 or so) reviews of Reclaiming History in the opening pages. Why is this relevant and important you may ask ? It is probably fair to say that a good many of the reviewers represent established and scholarly if not at least dependable organizations - and that these reviewers were open minded or perhaps even reflected the majority of the American public on this subject - that Kennedy was killed as a result of a conspiracy.

But what do they now say....well words to the effect that Reclaiming History (and therefore Four Days in November) establishes beyond a reasonable doubt and in truth beyond a doubt that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone - that the majority have been duped by pro conspiracy wishful thinking for some 40 plus years. To convince so overwhelmingly is a genuine achievement and one must reflect that if so many people - who's job it is to evaluate subject matter such as this - are convinced by Bugliosi after all this time, then he must be worth reading.

So after all this time Oswald "did it after all". Is that true one may well ask ? There is no reason for the many dozens of reviewers to praise the book and still not disagree with its conclusion, but the fact is they do agree with the conclusion. Why ? Because one, they have actually read the book and two they have thought about what they have read. The fact is, if you do actually read the book you will almost certainly agree with its conclusions. Even the chances that a small conspiracy with the tiniest "c" occurred, is dismissed with ease leaving the thoughtful reader in no doubt that Lee Harvey Oswald alone killed John F. Kennedy.

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"Some day you'll hang your heads in shame...My son [may be] the unsung hero of this episode."--Marguerite, Oswald's mother

When Vincent Bugliosi wrote Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, published in May, 2007, the predecessor of the book being reviewed here, it was widely regarded as his magnum opus, a towering masterpiece which took twenty years and 1648 pages to write. In this new edition about the assassination, drawn from Reclaiming History, Bugliosi has now winnowed the original manuscript to approximately 500 pages, concentrating on the facts of the assassination and eliminating nearly all the material used by the conspiracy theorists because he has essentially disproved the conspiracy idea.

Four Days in November reconstructs the assassination, giving dates and times, sometimes second by second, to make these real events come to life, and he includes seventy-nine photographs and drawings. The resulting achievement is stunning, an intensely readable and compelling work of scholarship which should eliminate, once and for all, the idea that there was more than one gunman. Photographs of the shooting, broken down into tiny fractions of a second, anatomical drawings of the wounds of President Kennedy and Governor Connolly, fingerprint evidence in the "sniper's nest" at the Book Depository, extensive photographs of the grassy knoll at the time of the shooting, and accounts from many eye-witnesses provide weighty, seemingly incontrovertible, evidence that Oswald was the lone shooter.

Bugliosi, who prosecuted Charles Manson in the Tate-LaBianca trial and then went on to write Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders about that trial, is an accomplished writer who shares with the reader the kinds of details that he, as a prosecutor, counts as compelling evidence. At the same time, he is a painstaking recreator of scenes and observer of human nature. His intuitive sense of how people behave gives him an understanding of their psychology and, at times, motivations, all of which humanize this account of seemingly inhuman actions. Focusing on Lee Harvey Oswald and his dysfunctional family, the Dallas police and press, Jack Ruby and the underworld which he represents in Dallas, and the Kennedy family as it comes to grips not only with the loss of the President but with the loss of a loved one, Bugliosi provides an intimate and unforgettable look at a national tragedy which, in his hands, is also transformed into a moving series of personal tragedies.

Readers who begin this book will be as compelled to keep reading, as details unfold, as were all of us who lived through these events during that terrible long weekend in November, 1963, when we remained glued to our TV sets around the clock, and the entire country shut down. Bugliosi's total dedication to providing every relevant detail, his ability to convey the atmosphere and the understandable confusion following the shooting, his sensitivity to the feelings of the innocent people and families who were permanently scarred by these events, and his honesty in recreating events without trying to make the facts "fit" an agenda, make this book a milestone of historical research. Certain to be honored with awards in the coming months, Four Days in November endows terrible events with the respect--and finality--they deserve. n Mary Whipple

Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery
The Death of a President November 20-November 25 1963
The Warren Commission Report: Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy

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Succinct, compelling and evocative

This is a brilliantly written and highly readable book. The events of the four days are documented virtually minute-by-minute in an excellent narrative. This work flows so well it I would like to suggest it reads like a thriller - but only in the most complimentary sense. That comment is not intended to demean a work of research and clarity that is worthy of very wide readership.

Truly read this book, every page (and Reclaiming History, too)

Vince Bugliosi's masterful work is a devastating knock-out blow to those who, like me, once believed there was a conspiracy in the death of JFK. Bugliosi finishes and completes, in exhaustive and impressive detail, the work of the Warren Commission, the House Select Committee on Assassinations, and, quite frankly, all the other writers who have ever delved into the crime of the twentieth century. It is time to get a life, America: Oswald did indeed kill Kennedy, acting alone. Vince Bugliosi has done what I once thought was the impossible: he has convinced me of this notion. The conspiracy community was able to survive the Warren Commission Report, as well as the Report of the House Select Committee on Assassinations. The question is whether it will be able to survive Bugliosi's seminal work on this subject.
Vince Bugliosi letter to Vince Palamara dated 7/14/07:"I want you to know that I am very impressed with your research abilities and the enormous amount of work you put into your investigation of the Secret Service regarding the assassination. You are, unquestionably, the main authority on the Secret Service with regard to the assassination. I agree with you that they did not do a good job protecting the president (e.g. see p. 1443 of my book)..."

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"As good a second-by-second reconstruction of the assassination and its aftermath as I've read."?Bryan Burrough, New York Times

Four Days in November is an extraordinarily exciting, precise, and definitive narrative of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, by Lee Harvey Oswald. It is drawn from Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, a huge and historic account of the event and all the conspiracy theories it spawned, by Vincent Bugliosi, famed prosecutor of Charles Manson and author of Helter Skelter. For general readers, the carefully documented account presented in Four Days is utterly persuasive: Oswald did it and he acted alone. 81 illustrations.

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reviews: page 1, 2

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