My Reading List

What really happened in Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963? Growing up, I was taught that President Kennedy was shot by a lone gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald, from a window on the sixth floor of the Dallas School Book Depository. At the time, which was many years ago, I saw no problem with this; after all, Kennedy wasn't the first president to be assassinated. As time went on, I began to realize it was not so cut-and-dry. There was talk of a conspiracy, of a second or even third gunman on an area that would become famously known as the grassy knoll. Some say it was the Cubans; others say the Russians. Some would even go so far as to say that the CIA and Lyndon Johnson had a hand in it. With all this information being tossed around, I decided that if I wanted to really understand what happened to our 35th President, I would need to research it on my own from a number of different sources spanning all the different theories and controversies. I began by picking up Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy by Jim Marrs. This book was the basis for the Oliver Stone film JFK . As of now, I'm about 200 pages into it and there is so much information in just those 200 pages that I haven't really been able to absorb it all. It's decidely pro-conspiracy, and I will be breaking down my thoughts on the first chapter of the book, "The Kill Zone," later this week.


In addition to Crossfire, I will be reading the following books: Never Again, Oswald and the CIA, Murder in Dealey Plaza, Falling Chips: A Deconstruction of the Single-Bullet Theory of the JFK Assassination, The Warren Commission Report: The Official Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and The Great Zapruder Film Hoax. I picked these books because each of them deals with a different aspect of the assassination, which hopefully will allow me to piece together as much information as possible in order to form an educated opinion on what really happened that day in Dallas.

And while I don't have them yet, Grassy Knoll Witnesses and Someone Would Have Talked are two more that I would like to add to my collection before all is said and done.

In addition to the books, I will be posting and discussing clips from documentaries, specials, and other video resources.