Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye: Memories of John Fitzgerald Kennedy


Kenneth P. O'Donnell - 1972
    Kennedy crafted an image that inspired and thrilled millions—and left an outsize legacy after his tragic murder. Only a select inner circle was privy to the man behind Camelot.In Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye, Kenneth P. O’Donnell and David F. Powers, two members of Kennedy’s “Irish Mafia,” give an unflinching, honest, and intimate portrayal of the Kennedy family and JFK’s presidency. As they recount Kennedy’s journey from his charismatic first campaign for Congress to his rapid rise to national standing, culminating on a November day in Texas, O’Donnell and Powers reveal the inner workings of a leader still mourned today.

The Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy


William W. Turner - 1978
    Immediately the Los Angeles Police Department concluded that the assassin, Sirhan Sirhan, had acted alone. The FBI conducted a parallel inquiry and concurred. And the vast majority of the American people accepted their opinion.In this compelling book—mysteriously suppressed on its initial publication—former FBI agent William Turner and investigative reporter Jonn Christian expose convincing evidence that Sirhan did not act alone.Based on more than ten years of intensive research, Turner and Christian raise serious questions about RFK’s murder:•What was the virtually apolitical Sirhan’s motive?•Why, if Sirhan was standing in front of his victim, were the fatal wounds in the back of Kennedy’s head?•Why were there too many spent bullets (some the wrong size) for Sirhan’s gun?•Did the LAPD discredit witnesses, try to make them alter their stories, and destroy key records?•Was Sirhan, in fact, a “Manchurian Candidate,” programmed through hypnosis either to kill Kennedy or divert attention while others did the job?The Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy makes the case that the murder of RFK, and the subsequent police and government investigations, bear all the hallmarks of the conspiracy surrounding the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the resulting Warren Commission. It is a fascinating and chilling reexamination of the tragic events that undoubtedly changed the course of American history.

A Farewell to Justice: Jim Garrison, JFK's Assassination, and the Case That Should Have Changed History


Joan Mellen - 2005
    Kennedy’s murder.Garrison began by exposing the contradictions in the Warren Report, which concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald was an unstable pro-Castro Marxist who acted alone in killing Kennedy. A Farewell to Justice reveals that Oswald, no Marxist, was in fact working with both the FBI and the CIA, as well as with U.S. Customs, and that the attempts to sabotage Garrison’s investigation reached the highest levels of the U.S. government. Garrison interviewed various individuals involved in the assassination, ranging from Clay Shaw and CIA contract employee David Ferrie to a Marine cohort of Oswald named Kerry Thornley, who at the very least was a Defense Intelligence Agency asset. Garrison’s suspects included CIA-sponsored soldiers of fortune enlisted in assassination attempts against Fidel Castro, an anti-Castro Cuban asset, and a young runner for the conspirators, interviewed here for the first time by the author.Building upon Garrison’s effort, Mellen uncovers decisive new evidence and clearly establishes the intelligence agencies’ roles in both a president’s assassination and its cover-up, set in motion well before the actual events of November 22, 1963.

The Echo from Dealey Plaza: the True Story of the First African American on the White House Secret Service Detail and His Quest for Justice After the Assassination of JFK


Abraham Bolden - 2008
    Abraham Bolden was a young African American Secret Service agent in Chicago when he was asked by John F. Kennedy himself to join the White House Secret Service detail. For Bolden, it was a dream come true—and an encouraging sign of the charismatic president’s vision for a new America.But the dream quickly turned sour when Bolden found himself regularly subjected to open hostility and blatant racism. He was taunted, mocked, and disparaged but remained strong, and he did not allow himself to become discouraged.More of a concern was the White House team’s irresponsible approach to security. While on his tour of presidential duty, Bolden witnessed firsthand the White House agents’ long-rumored lax approach to their job. Drinking on duty, abandoning key posts—this was not a team that appeared to take their responsibility to protect the life of the president particularly seriously. Both prior to and following JFK’s assassination, Bolden sought to expose and address the inappropriate behavior and negligence of these agents, only to find himself the victim of a sinister conspiracy that resulted in his conviction and imprisonment on a trumped-up bribery charge.A gripping memoir substantiated by recently declassified government documents, The Echo from Dealey Plaza is the story of the terrible price paid by one man for his commitment to truth and justice, as well as a shocking new perspective on the circumstances surrounding the death of a beloved president.From the Hardcover edition.

Mafia Kingfish


John H. Davis - 1988
    Kennedy actually masterminded by a desperate mob boss? The House Select Committee on Assassinations seemed to agree; it named New Orleans Mafioso Carlos Marcello its prime suspect in 1979. Now, in Mafia Kingfish, John H. Davis reveals stunning new evidence of Marcello's complicity in the murders of both John and Robert Kennedy.

Destiny Betrayed: J.F.K., Cuba, and the Garrison Case


James DiEugenio - 1992
    Kennedy, his murder continues to haunt the American psyche and stands as a turning point in our nation's history. The Warren Commission rushed out its Report, but the questions would not go away. Was there a conspiracy? Was there a coup at the highest levels of government? Today, after millions upon millions have seen Oliver Stone's incisive film, JFK, the drive to reexamine this crime of the century has reached fever pitch. The core of that movement, the protagonist of JFK, is Jim Garrison. On March 1, 1967, New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison electrified the world by arresting local businessman Clay Shaw for conspiracy to murder the President. His co-conspirator, David Ferrie, had been found dead a few days before. Garrison charged that elements of the United States government, in particular the CIA, were behind the crime. From the beginning, his probe was virulently attacked in the media and violently denounced from Washington. His office was infiltrated and sabotaged, and witnesses disappeared and died strangely. Eventually, Shaw was acquitted after the briefest of jury deliberations and the only prosecution ever brought for the murder of President Kennedy was over. But Garrison never stopped pursuing the case, and, over the years, an army of investigators and researchers have confirmed the essence of his case; Jim Garrison has been vindicated. Only a small minority of Americans still support the conclusions of the Warren Commission, and, since the release of JFK, that minority is shrinking every day. There is a growing demand for the declassification of the mountains of documents that have been locked up in government vaults for decades. There are calls for a new and thorough investigation. James DiEugenio's Destiny Betrayed is the most up-to-date and clearest analysis ever published of Garrison's pioneering inquiry and the assassination itself. The author not only studied all the exis

JFK in the Senate: Pathway to the Presidency


John T. Shaw - 2013
    Kennedy became a legendary young president he was the junior senator from Massachusetts. The Senate was where JFK's presidential ambitions were born and first realized. In the first book to deal exclusively with JFK's Senate years, author John T. Shaw looks at how the young Senator was able to catapult himself on the national stage. Tip O'Neill once quipped that Kennedy received more publicity for less accomplishment than anyone in Congress. But O'Neill didn't understand that Kennedy saw a different path to congressional influence and ultimately the presidency. Unlike Lyndon Johnson, the Democratic leader in the Senate, JFK never aspired to be "The Master of the Senate" who made deals and kept the institution under his control. Instead, he envisioned himself as a "Historian-Scholar-Statesman" in the mold of his hero Winston Churchill which he realized with the 1957 publication of Profiles of Courage that earned JFK a Pulitzer Prize and public limelight. Smart, dashing, irreverent and literary, the press could not get enough of him. Yet, largely overlooked has been Kennedy's tenure on a special Senate committee to identify the five greatest senators in American history—JFK's work on this special panel coalesced his relationships in Congress, and helped catapult him toward the presidency. Based on primary documents from JFK's Senate years as well as memoirs, oral histories, and interviews with his top aides, JFK in the Senate provides new insight into an underappreciated aspect of his political career.

Martin Luther King


Godfrey Hodgson - 2009
    Martin Luther King Jr. is as relevant today as he was when he led civil rights campaigns in the 1950s and 1960s. He was an agent and a prophet of political change in this country, and the election of President Barack Obama is his direct legacy.Now from one of Britain's most experienced political observers comes a new, accessible biography of the man and his works. The story of King is dramatic, and Godfrey Hodgson presents it with verve, clarity, and acute insight based in part on his own reporting on-scene at the time. He interviewed King half a dozen times or more; heard his speech at the March on Washington; was in Birmingham, Selma and Chicago; and met many of the characters in King's life story. Martin Luther King combines the best of his own reporting, plus the work of other biographers and researchers, to trace the iconic civil rights leader's career from his birth in Atlanta in 1929, through the campaigns that made possible the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, to his assassination in Memphis in 1968. Hodgson sheds light on every aspect of an extraordinary life: the Black Baptist culture in which King grew up, his theology and political philosophy, his physical and moral courage, his insistence on the injustice of inequality, his campaigning energy, his repeated sexual infidelities.Hodgson describes the political minefield in which King operated; follows how he gradually persuaded President Kennedy that he could not stand by and allow the civil rights movement to be frustrated; and describes how, on the verge of success, his career was threatened by President Johnson's anger at King's principled decision to come out against the Vietnam War. He also puts King's career into the context of American history in the crisis of the 1960s. In his life, King was frustrated; but in death, he has been triumphant.Martin Luther King allows the charisma and power of King's personality to shine through, showing in gripping narrative style exactly how one man helped America to progress toward its truest ideals. Hodgson's extensive research and detail help paint an accurate, complex portrait of one of America's most important leaders.Godfrey Hodgson has worked in Britain and America as a newspaper and magazine journalist; as a television reporter, documentary maker and anchor; as a university teacher and lecturer; and as the author of a dozen well-received books about U.S. politics and recent history, including America in Our Time, a history of the United States in the 1960s; More Equal than Others, on politics and society in twentieth-century America; and most recently, a biography of Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, The Gentleman from New York. Hodgson met King on a number of occasions between 1956 and 1967. He recently retired as director of the Reuters Foundation Programme at Oxford University and is a visiting journalism professor at City University in London.PRAISE FOR America in Our Time"A critique so stimulating and compelling that I can only say read it."---Richard Lingeman, The New York Times"It simply gets right, without great fuss, the detail and proportion of things like the civil rights movement, student unrest, the stages of our Vietnam engagement."---Garry Wills, The New York Review of BooksPRAISE FOR More Equal than Others"The most thoughtful, thorough and sorrowful book imaginable on what has happened in these years."---Bernard Crick, The Independent

Cause of Death


Cyril Wecht - 1993
    These and other sensational cases featured in this provacative book make for true-crime and medical detection at its most authentic and compelling--a must read for anyone interested in the truth behind the headlines.

LBJ: The Mastermind of JFK's Assassination


Phillip F. Nelson - 2010
    Johnson's flawed personality and character traits were formed when he was a child, and - through his primary enablers, his mother and his wife - grew unchecked for the rest of his life as he suffered severe bouts of manic-depressive illness. The people-manipulation skills he learned at his father's side and had perfected by the time he graduated from college became the currency he used to barter, steal and finesse his way through the corridors of power on Capitol Hill. These skills, combined with his overpowering manic personality, amoral instincts and thirst for power, allowed him to prosper both financially and politically during his years in Congress. Neither his family nor his employees, aides, associates and cabinet officials would ever confront him on any issue for which he had made up his mind, including the Vietnam War. Unfortunately, his "darker side" included a lifetime struggle with "bipolar (manic-depressive) disorder" which he successfully hid from the public, though not all of his aides. It is the premise of this book that Lyndon Johnson suffered recurrent and progressively stronger bouts of mental collapses during the period of his vice presidency as he planned his ascension to the presidency, purposely undermining Kennedy's domestic and foreign policy initiatives for the purpose of cleverly saving them for his own legacy. His active involvement with JFK's assassination will be conclusively shown, including photographic evidence that he knew in advance when and where it would happen. The stunning conclusion of this book is that Lyndon Johnson began planning his takeover - the fulfillment of his life-time dreams - even before being named as the vice presidential nominee in 1960.

Shadow Play: The Unsolved Murder of Robert F. Kennedy


William Klaber - 1997
    Kennedy’s murder explores ignored witness accounts, coerced testimony, bullet-hole evidence, and other issues surrounding the political homicide, and is the basis for the new podcast, The RFK Tapes, which debuted at #1 on the iTunes chart, available now.On June 4, 1968, just after he had declared victory in the California presidential primary, Robert F. Kennedy was gunned down in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel. Captured a few feet away, gun in hand, was a young Palestinian-American named Sirhan Sirhan. The case against Sirhan was declared “open and shut” and the court proceedings against him were billed as “the trial of the century”; American justice at its fairest and most sure. But was it? By careful examination of the police files, hidden for twenty years, Shadow Play explores the chilling significance of altered evidence, ignored witnesses, and coerced testimony. It challenges the official assumptions and conclusions about this most troubling, and perhaps still unsolved, political murder.

Jack: A Life Like No Other


Geoffrey Perrett - 2001
    Kennedy have been based almost entirely on newspaper files and personal recollections. Geoffrey Perret's Jack is both the first comprehensive one-volume biography of JFK and the first account of his life based on the extensive and important documentary record that has finally become available, including Kennedy's personal diaries, hundreds of hours of taped conversations from the White House, recently declassified government documents, extensive family correspondence, and crucial interviews sealed for nearly forty years. The result is a gripping, accurate, and ultimately moving portrait of America's most charismatic president.Jack provides much-needed context and perspective on Kennedy's bewilderingly complex personality. It offers an even-handed account of the seamy side of his life - orgies and abortions, health and drug problems-along with valuable insights into JFK's truly idealistic and visionary character.Jack presents a compelling account of the volatile relationship between Kennedy and his wife, including Jackie's attempt to divorce him, move to Hollywood, and become a film star. At the same time Perret explains how, together, they created the Kennedy style.Jack reveals how the restless, innovative Kennedy was able to overturn more than a hundred years of political tradition, forge the modern political campaign, and, once in the White House, modernize the presidency. His success was so complete that all serious presidential candidates since 1960 have sought to compare themselves to JFK, not challenging his legacy but embracing it.Jack is filled, too, with numerous revelations, such as the true story behind the lobotomy of JFK's sister Rosemary. And here, for the first time, is a comprehensive account of Kennedy's numerous and varied ailments from childhood on, including his back problems.Perret describes how JFK got the two most important decisions of his administration right: his handling of the Cuban missile crisis and his stance on civil rights. As to Vietnam, Kennedy did not believe it was worth fighting for, and in the last months of his presidency he began formulating a secret plan for neutralization and withdrawal-if he won the 1964 election. But that, of course, was not to be: Convinced he would die young, Kennedy foresaw that a violent death would claim him. Throughout his brief time in the White House he was haunted by a vision of a man standing at a window, looking down at him, holding a rifle.Jack: A Life Like No Other is a book like no other. Here, at last, John F. Kennedy seems to step off the page in all his vitality, charm, and originality.

To Move the World: JFK's Quest for Peace


Jeffrey D. Sachs - 2013
    Kennedy’s presidency—the crusade for world peace that consumed his final year in office—by the New York Times bestselling author of The Price of Civilization, Common Wealth, and The End of Poverty  The last great campaign of John F. Kennedy’s life was not the battle for reelection he did not live to wage, but the struggle for a sustainable peace with the Soviet Union. To Move the World recalls the extraordinary days from October 1962 to September 1963, when JFK marshaled the power of oratory and his remarkable political skills to establish more peaceful relations with the Soviet Union and a dramatic slowdown in the proliferation of nuclear arms.   Kennedy and his Soviet counterpart, Nikita Khrushchev, led their nations during the Cuban Missile Crisis, when the two superpowers came eyeball to eyeball at the nuclear abyss. This near-death experience shook both leaders deeply. Jeffrey D. Sachs shows how Kennedy emerged from the Missile crisis with the determination and prodigious skills to forge a new and less threatening direction for the world. Together, he and Khrushchev would pull the world away from the nuclear precipice, charting a path for future peacemakers to follow.   During his final year in office, Kennedy gave a series of speeches in which he pushed back against the momentum of the Cold War to persuade the world that peace with the Soviets was possible. The oratorical high point came on June 10, 1963, when Kennedy delivered the most important foreign policy speech of the modern presidency.  He argued against the prevailing pessimism that viewed humanity as doomed by forces beyond its control. Mankind, argued Kennedy, could bring a new peace into reality through a bold vision combined with concrete and practical measures.   Achieving the first of those measures in the summer of 1963, the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, required more than just speechmaking, however. Kennedy had to use his great gifts of persuasion on multiple fronts—with fractious allies, hawkish Republican congressmen, dubious members of his own administration, and the American and world public—to persuade a skeptical world that cooperation between the superpowers was realistic and necessary. Sachs shows how Kennedy campaigned for his vision and opened the eyes of the American people and the world to the possibilities of peace.    Featuring the full text of JFK’s speeches from this period, as well as striking photographs, To Move the World gives us a startlingly fresh perspective on Kennedy’s presidency and a model for strong leadership and problem solving in our time.Praise for To Move the World   “Rife with lessons for the current administration . . . We cannot know how many more steps might have been taken under Kennedy’s leadership, but To Move the World urges us to continue on the journey.”—Chicago Tribune  “The messages in these four speeches seem all too pertinent today.”—Publishers WeeklyFrom the Hardcover edition.

The Plot to Kill King: The Truth Behind the Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.


William F. Pepper - 2016
    This myth-shattering exposé is a revised, updated, and heavily expanded volume of Pepper’s original bestselling and critically acclaimed book Orders to Kill, with twenty-six years of additional research included. The result reveals dramatic new details of the night of the murder, the trial, and why Ray was chosen to take the fall for an evil conspiracy—a government-sanctioned assassination of our nation’s greatest leader. The plan, according to Pepper, was for a team of United States Army Special Forces snipers to kill King, but just as they were taking aim, a backup civilian assassin pulled the trigger.In The Plot to Kill King, Pepper shares the evidence and testimonies that prove that Ray was a fall guy chosen by those who viewed King as a dangerous revolutionary. His findings make the book one of the most important of our time—the uncensored story of the murder of an American hero that contains disturbing revelations about the obscure inner-workings of our government and how it continues, even today, to obscure the truth.Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in history--books about World War II, the Third Reich, Hitler and his henchmen, the JFK assassination, conspiracies, the American Civil War, the American Revolution, gladiators, Vikings, ancient Rome, medieval times, the old West, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

Four Days in November: The Original Coverage of the John F. Kennedy Assassination


The New York Times - 2003
    Kennedy in Dallas forty years ago remains, and will always remain, indelible in the minds of those old enough to recall it. The youngest elected leader in American history, a charming man leading what seemed a charmed life, by general consensus a president whose administration, having survived its early crises, was now at last hitting its stride, was shot and killed by a sniper firing a mail-order rifle from the southeast corner of the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. So great was the shock that time seemed to freeze in the squinting glare of late-November sun. For four days in November 1963, the business of the nation ground to a halt. The coverage provided by The New York Times is still generally considered the most complete of its day. Almost miraculously, Times reporters, writers, and editors produced 250 columns, or about 200,000 words, on and about the very first day. The other three days were no less exhaustive. Through the combined efforts of, among many others, Tom Wicker, James Reston, Max Frankel, Anthony Lewis, Harrison Salisbury, A. M. Rosenthal, and Arthur Gelb, The Times covered history as it was happening, from the assassination to the funeral. Here were the first portraits of Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby, the earliest speculation regarding the prospects of Lyndon Johnson's administration, the immediate reaction from world leaders, and, perhaps most of all, the pulse of a populace reeling from an event that surpassed both understanding and belief.This commemorative volume provides a haunting, firsthand, and detailed chronology of the events that took place in Dallas and Washington from November 22 to November 25, 1963. Here is history being recorded in the moment---a recitation not just of facts but of emotions and reactions as they were being experienced. The clarity of the writing is matched only by the almost desperate intensity of its occasion. Getting all the news that's fit to print seemed the only way of keeping the world from spinning further into chaos; The Times's coverage provided not just information but a sense of balance. Though no one would ultimately explain to everyone's satisfaction the why, the who, what, and how were brought with amazing speed and accuracy within our grasp. f0With an introduction by Tom Wicker and edited by Robert B. Semple Jr., Four Days in November is an extraordinary book. It will serve as an invaluable resource for anyone wanting to remember, to understand, and most of all to feel what it was like, minute by minute, detail by detail, while one of the most traumatic events in recent American history unfolded.