Despite the size, the book is easily readable, apart from a few volumes that might be a bit too technical for the average reader, and full of critical data and justified speculation. That being said, this is one of those Kennedy assassination books that are best to read only after you have a general understanding of the JFK assassination conspiracy, which you can get through reading some of the other books on this list. Garrison gives you all of the clues that he uncovered during his investigation, which led him to believe that Oswald is not the real killer and that bigger players were involved. This book inspired Oliver Stone’s movie titled JFK, which features Kevin Costner as Jim Garrison. Just like the book, the movie was also a huge box office success.

This book was an eye-opener. Lifton painstakingly goes through the evidence as it was presented in the autopsy report. Although he is quite detailed, I never bogged down in the descriptions. His discussion of the medical evidence did not require specialized medical knowledge. Whatever terms might have been unfamiliar he explained, and I kept reading without resorting to outside references. With passages on freedom, democracy, civil rights, education, justice, tragedy, and peace, Make Gentle the Life of This World speaks powerfully to America’s unstoppable drive for a better world. Complemented by poignant photographs of Robert Kennedy, this is an extraordinary tribute to an extraordinary hero, whose dream for America has never been extinguished. Throughout the 1960s, Robert F. Kennedy kept a private journal of favorite quotations, recording the philosophies of great leaders and thinkers throughout history. Thirty years after his father’s tragic death, Maxwell Taylor Kennedy has culled the highlights of this journal, along with moving portions of Robert Kennedy’s most memorable speeches, to create an inspiring, immortal voice for his father’s vision.Once Kennedy started to waver on those Cold Warrior beliefs, the book claims he was marked for death by the military intelligence agencies that held (and still hold) huge influence over every level of government in the U.S. These forces, which Douglass call “the Unspeakable” (after Thomas Meryton), tagged Kennedy as a dangerous traitor, plotted his assassination, and orchestrated the subsequent killing and cover-up in Dallas in 1963. In this profound installment to the ever-growing index of books on Robert Kennedy, Ellen B. Meacham tells the story of his visit to the Delta, while also examining the forces of history, economics, and politics that shaped the lives of the children he met in Mississippi in 1967 and the decades that followed. That said, while I have full admiration for the above books for shining a spotlight on the man and not the deed, I still credit Bugliosi’s book as being the gold standard. Most of the books that you are going to see on this list ultimately focus on the assassination of John F. Kennedy. However, you will also get to see a lot about his personal life, years of the past, and many other aspects of this man’s life. John was born on May 29, 1917. We all know him as a strong politician and the 35th President of the United States of America. Kennedy also served during the Cold War, and most of his acts during his presidency had something to do with the Soviet Union and Cuba. Personal Life The book starts out with an introduction by Oliver Stone, the director of the famous JFK movie. Prouty’s theories, claims, and evidence were in fact some of the main inspirations for the director to produce the movie. Crucial Facts Surrounding the Assassination

Douglass’s “JFK and the Unspeakable” is better than “Reclaiming History” and “Legacy of the Secrecy” in this regard, but I think it still suffers from the fact that Douglass is a liberation theologian, not a journalist. His concern is ultimately spiritual. Since my spirit is like-minded, I don’t hesitate to recommend Douglass’s book to newcomers to the JFK story. But I have to admit that Douglass’s work is sometimes permissive in its standards of evidence. It does not have the rigor of “Not in Your Lifetime.” Who Really Killed Kennedy? (2013), by Dr Jerome R Corsi, also finds the mafia guilty, although with a little help from Richard Nixon and the French. Another work published to mark the 50th anniversary of JFK’s death, The Man Who Killed Kennedy: The Case Against LBJ, by Roger Stone, a Trump associate, implicates President Lyndon Baines Johnson, in close association with mobsters and US intelligence. The reason why Lane claims that the CIA eliminated JFK is that he had plans of dissolving the agency. He also goes in on the media, blaming them for not covering the conviction trials of the alleged murderer closely, and for failing to give any sort of credibility to potentially promising conspiracy theories. A year after the book was published, a documentary of the same name was also released based on it, which includes footage of many witnesses that were in very close proximity to the president when the shooting happened, who are in support of Mark Lane’s claims. This book is one of the first ones to raise questions about the questionable circumstances of JFK’s death. Questions that still remain unanswered to this day.

I went through all the books mentioned in this post. Summers is a real classic (and might even become still better with it’s updates), Bugliosi left me unimpressed despite its volume, Waldron contains some very good research but suffers with a very implausible plot-theory, James Douglass’s “JFK & The Unspeakable” I’ld highly recommend not only for beginners but also for advanced JFK-scholars, his “spiritual” angle is imho no disadavantage at all. Most publications have been sceptical of this finding. On the Trail of the Assassins by Jim Garrison (1988), a Louisiana lawyer, and L Fletcher Prouty’s JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F Kennedy (1992), featured key source material for Oliver Stone’s movie JFK(1991), which suggested that the president was executed by a vast cabal of businessmen, gangsters, politicians, soldiers, Cuban dissidents and spooks. Where there are problems with the evidence and conflicting interpretations he fairly and succinctly summarizes the state of the debate and puts it in context. When I fault historian Robert Dallek or Washington reporters for showing signs of “denial” in writing about JFK’s assassination, it is because I feel they do not engage new and conflicting evidence the way Summers does. Better known as the basis for one of the greatest conspiracy thriller movies – Alan J Pakula’s 1974 film – Singer’s novel was among the first works to react to the widespread view that the Warren commission report into JFK’s shooting was fiction by exploring what might really have happened: a reporter investigating the killing of a politician uncovers a vast corporate conspiracy. Singer also presciently caught the paranoia and suspicion among American politicians and voters that would soon result in Watergate and the fall of Nixon. The Tears of Autumn

Our Man In Mexico: Winston Scott and the Hidden History of the CIA by Jefferson Morley. Though not about the JFK assassination per se this book is unrivaled in how it pursues and presents Lee Harvey Oswald’s undeniably peculiar relationship with intelligence agencies. After reading it I could not help but conclude that James Jesus Angleton - chief of the CIA's counterintelligence staff from 1954 to 1975 – was running an operation in which Oswald was involved and one most likely concerning the President of the United States. What makes Morley’s writing so impressive is how skillfully he avoids speculation, like that which I just expressed (smile). To his credit he has attempted to bring a more rational approach to those within the JFK assassination study community with his ‘JFK Facts’ portaland his efforts to get remaining documents declassified are nothing short of heroic. As for substantiating Colonel Prouty – Mr. Morley told me in 2010, “Fletcher Prouty is eminently credible.” Though I wonder over Talbot’s omission of Col. Prouty, I whole-heartedly share the respect he expresses for Jefferson Morley (“ We need the facts – as Jefferson Morley, one of the few journalists to devote serious effort to the Kennedy case, has demonstrated. Morley has been pursuing a lengthy Freedom of Information battle with the CIA to pry loose more than 1,500 documents that the agency is still concealing in defiance of the 1992 JFK Records Act.”) And we are not alone – Morley’s journalistic career and authorship is widely lauded. On November 22, 1963, the 35th President of the US was assassinated, thus ending his life at the age of just 46 years old. This tragic event occurred mid-day, at 12:30 PM to be exact. The brutal assassination took place in Dallas, Texas, and was during a presidential motorcade through Dealey Plaza. He combines old with newly discovered evidence on the topic and is certain that a sniper placed looking directly straight at president Kennedy is the one who ultimately delivered the fatal shot to the president’s head. As with most other books on this topic, Moore also talks in detail about the many irregularities involving the Warren Commission. 50 Years of Digging

The book asserts the idea that a government can never investigate itself in a crime of this magnitude. Was the convicted Sirhan Sirhan a willing participant? Or was he a mind-controlled assassin? It has fallen to independent researchers like Pease to lay out the evidence in a clear and concise manner, allowing readers to form their theories about this event.

This book is about the author 19s process of doing research and investigation into the Kennedy Assassination. He uncovers huge differences between the Warren Commission evidence, FBI evidence and the different autopsy reports. Part of the story is how he gets pulled into more research the more he found. He builds a personal relationship with one of the people on the Warren Commission and uses that insight into what was considered as the 1Cbest evidence 1D. There is fantastic documentation into the Warren Commission, who set it up, who was involved, who actually did the work and who made the final decision about what was published. Lifton goes into great detail about chain of custody problems, lost evidence and autopsy conflicts between Dallas and Bethesda Navy Hospital. He finds documentation of FBI personal interviews with very credible witnesses that were completely ignored. He investigates the statistical impossibility of the large number of people involved that came to an untimely death within a year after the assassination. There are detailed chapters on the Zapruder film and how the presidential limo was handled and who had custody prior to the 1CCSI 1D investigation took place. In the end Lifton concludes that even when the files are opened to the public, the truth will remain hidden 26why 26because what was put in the files was altered or false to begin with. This is not a direct conspiracy theory book, but it leads you to conclude yourself (by preponderance of evidence) that some combination of government involvement was involved. The detailed analysis of the events prior, during, and after the assassination, as well as the inclusion of some never-before-seen photographs from November 22, 1963, make this one of the best books on Kennedy assassination, and one that is definitely worth a read. Summers’s biography of Richard Nixon revealed the tormented president’s efforts to get mental health treatment, a previously unknown and revealing story that was remarkably fair to an easily demonized figure. As a result of his fact-finding skills, “Not In Your Lifetime” is more empirical than theoretical, a rare thing in the literature of JFK’s assassination. Waldron, an independent scholar, comes to the JFK story with the mission of explaining not just how Kennedy died but the nature of American politics in the 1960’s, encompassing not just Kennedy’s presidency, but the assassination of Martin Luther King, and the Watergate scandal. This is ambitious — and endless. If the reader differs with Waldron’s interpretation of events, the story starts to lose credibility. As Waldron’s vehicle motors on towards pre-ordained destination, the author seems oblivious to the possibility that the reader might have a mind of his or her own.

In A Lie Too Big to Fail, longtime Kennedy researcher (of both JFK and RFK) Lisa Pease lays out, in meticulous detail, how witnesses with evidence of conspiracy were silenced by the Los Angeles Police Department; how evidence was deliberately altered and, in some instances, destroyed; and how the justice system and the media failed to present the truth of the case to the public. Pease reveals how the trial was essentially a sham, and how the prosecution did not dare to follow where the evidence led. Are persons who would think up Operation Northwoods not capable of planning to kill a President too? The interior of the Presidential limousine after the Kennedy assassination How Many JFK AssassinationFiles Have Been Declassified? I recommend Anthony Summers “ Not in Your Lifetime,” which has been updated and reissued this week. I think it is the best single introduction to the JFK assassination story.