The Day Kennedy Was Shot: A short book review

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(This review was originally written for Amazon.com in November 2003 by Alex Diaz-Granados...me.  I've altered it slightly to mark the fact that 2013 will be the 50th Anniversary of JFK's assassination.) 

Over the past 50 years, no event in American history has been so scrutinized or conjectured about than the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Millions of words have been written about that tragic day in Dallas: Some point the finger of blame solely at Lee Harvey Oswald, while others weave a confusing web of conspiracy theories that accuse the Mafia, French criminals, Fidel Castro, anti-Castro Cuban exiles and/or militarists in the government who wanted to expand America's role in Vietnam. 

One of the best books on the Kennedy assassination is the late Jim Bishop's gripping The Day Kennedy Was Shot, a detailed hour-by-hour account of the events of November 22, 1963, starting with the President's 7:00 AM wake-up at Fort Worth's Hotel Texas and ends 20 hours later in Washington, DC. Bishop follows all the major players -- JFK, Jackie, Lyndon B. Johnson, Oswald, Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby -- and eyewitnesses -- Helen Ganss, an elderly Ft. Worth widow who had been allowed to stay at the Hotel Texas even when the other guests were moved out by the Secret Service; Linnie Mae Randall, an Irving, Texas housewife who, while washing the dishes in her kitchen, she "saw Lee Harvey Oswald, bare head down, coming up Fifth Street with a long package in his hand. He held the fat part under his arm; the tapered end was pointing at the sidewalk. The rain didn't seem to bother him. He walked steadily, up Fifth, across the corner lot, toward Mrs. Randall's garage. She kept watching him, a dark, pretty woman with shoulder-length black hair. By rote, she set the dishes upright in the drain." 

John F. Kennedy had less than six hours left to live, of course, but while turning the pages of Bishop's 1968 book one feels the tension building up with each seemingly mundane detail (such as Mrs. Randall's dishes). The reader knows that once the President's party leaves the Hotel Texas for Carswell Air Force Base to board Air Force One for that short hop to Love Field, his fate is sealed. 

Bishop, working from various sources despite Mrs. Kennedy's attempts to block publication of his book, describes every minute detail of those tragic 20 hours -- from the rainy weather over Texas to the bloodstained pink dress that Jackie Kennedy wore throughout that horrible day -- in crisp and clear prose. 

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