Peter Knight and Barry Ryder on JFK Assassination Annotated.

Barry Ryder's Amazon review of Peter Knight's book - Annotated by Bill Kelly billkelly3@gmail.com 

The Kennedy Assassination (Representing American Events) Paperback – 3 Sept. 2007

by Peter Knight  (Author), Tim Woods (Editor)

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Kennedy-Assassination-Representing-American-Events/product-reviews/0748624112/ref=cm_cr_dp_d_show_all_btm?ie=UTF8&reviewerType=all_reviews&fbclid=IwAR2mGY4EK2BwXM1eYYPGZrehhOdT-a5Q1lEkhDJGQw_lJ4gV9aNT7Ts5d8Q

November 22nd 1963, Dealey Plaza As a seminal event in late twentieth-century American history, the Kennedy assassination has permeated the American and world consciousness in a wide variety of ways. It has long fascinated American writers, filmmakers and artists, and this book offers an authoritative critical introduction to the way the event has been constructed in a range of discourses. It looks at a variety of historical, political and cultural attempts to understand Kennedy's death. 

Representations include: journalism from the time; historical accounts and memoirs; official investigations, government reports and sociological inquiries; the huge number of conspiracy-minded interpretations; novels, plays and other works of literature; and the Zapruder footage, photography, avant-garde art, and Hollywood films. 

Considering the continuities and contradictions in how the event has been represented, the author focuses on how it has been seen through the lens of ideas about conspiracy, celebrity and violence. He also explores how the arguments about exactly what happened on 22 November 1963 have come to serve as a substitute way of debating the significance of Kennedy's legacy and the meaning of the 1960s more generally. Key Features: * presents information about the event itself, the cultural context of the period, and the consequences of the event * considers the ways in which the event has been represented in subsequent years in a variety of discourses * includes an annotated bibliography and 10 illustrations.

BK NOTES: Okay, I haven't read this book yet but I will. I want to respond to Barry Ryder's commentary as he is now reading my work, thanks to his pal Patrick Collins, and I am now reading his. 

This is an excellent book. It’s not another in-depth study of the minutia of the Kennedy assassination. Such a volume would be unnecessary, tediously repetitive and wholly redundant. Instead, Peter Knight offers a fascinating discussion on how and why there are so many different, competing versions of what ‘really happened’.

BK NOTES: That's okay with me. And indeed there are many varied accounts of the event, but it only happened one way and it is the job of the journalist, historians, attorneys, investigators, researchers and ordinary citizens to search for the truth and determine exactly how it happened. And that's what I am doing and I have discovered the MO of what happened at Dealey Plaza - that is how it was made to occur, though I still don't know who killed JFK.  

The author examines the many sources which have informed and misinformed the public for more than half a century. He discusses press reports, historical accounts, official investigations, books, film and much more. 

BK NOTES: What, no mention of the JFK Act of 1992 that required the government to release all of its JFK assassination records in full by October 2017, something that still hasn't happened. But no mention of those records? 

It’s an engrossing read, replete with astute observations, salient points, educated insights and intelligent commentary.

There are a few factual errors within the 164 pages and I’m sure that readers who are familiar with the subject matter will spot them. However, as this book doesn’t seek to re-examine the details of the Dallas murders, their presence doesn’t affect Knight’s main purpose.

The introduction concludes with the observation that, “The event has usually been represented as a watershed moment in American history, often with the implication that Kennedy’s death marked the loss of [US] innocence,. […] But this common assumption is based on a naively optimistic faith in America as an exceptional nation, a beacon of light to the world, that would otherwise have remained innocent and uncorrupted if it had not been for the evil intentions of either conspiracy or lone gunman.”

BK NOTES: The JFK assassination was a watershed moment in American history, like the Revolution, Civil War, WWI, Pearl Harbor, Vietnam, Watergate and 9/11, but this common assumption is corrupted not by astute observations, salient points, educated insights or intelligent commentary but by one Brit's high brow, gray wigged opinion, very similar to the Irish opinion of the British. 

This is very important point and it’s well made. This widely held belief lies at the heart of the angst that underpins much of the conspiracy thinking.

BK NOTES: Wait a minute! What conspiracy thinking? All of those watershed events were conspiracies, and it is not what underpins conspiracy thinking that should be studied in angst, but the thinking of those allegedly scholars and educators like Peter Knight and Barry Ryder who accept the official cover stories and try to sell them to the public in books like this, and reviews like this. 

In chapter two the author examines the role that contemporaneous journalism played in reporting the news of the assassination. He notes that many of the earliest misunderstandings had their beginnings with hurried and erroneous dispatches. He cites Dr Perry’s chaotic press conference in which he ventured his mistaken belief that Kennedy had been shot from the front. Within 48 hours, Perry had acknowledged his mistake and corrected it yet his initial opinion still persists as ‘a fact’ among the conspiracy theorists; it’s become an integral part of conspiracy nomenclature as a result of ad nauseam repetition over the years – and it’s wrong.

BK NOTES: When Anthony Summers - a real UK investigative reporter took on the JFK case, he was astounded that no reputable journalist had been running down the leads before him. It's become an integral part of the acceptance of the official cover story for academics and professionals like this who ad nauseam repetition of the same trite stories over the years - and it's wrong. That Oswald killed JFK all by his lonesome is totally wrong, and it can be proven to a legal and moral certainty and will be. 

There are some other examples that Knight omits; for example, a Secret Service Agent was not killed during the shooting even though press, TV and radio reports all said that one was.

BK: I'm sure Knight omits quite a lot. For instance the original tape and transcripts of the Air Force One radio transmissions that have gone missing, and the Office of Naval Intelligence 119 investigative reports on Oswald after his defection and after the assassination - no longer in existence, and the US Army Intelligence file on Oswald and Hidell that was "routinely destroyed" before the Church Committee requested them. And the ONI defector file that was declared an Assassination Record but then removed from the records made available to the public. I'm sure Knight doesn't mention any of that, or speaking of the SS, the Tampa Advance reports that were requested by the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) and then destroyed after the law was passed by Congress and signed by the President. 

Chapter three deals with the recorded history of the assassination. Knight discusses the books of William Manchester and Jim Bishop. Both were highly influential in conveying the story. Both were able to ‘narrate’ the events in ways that the Warren Commission volumes and report never could.

BK NOTES: Ah yes, Jim Bishop wrote the paperback book The Day The President Was Shot, that I read in grade school, and quotes one of the White House Communications Agency (WHCA) radio technicians repeating what he heard over the radio that are no longer on the existing tapes or transcripts. And William Manchester, he was one of three journalists - along with Pierre Salinger and the guy who wrote the book on the 1964 election - who LBJ gave permission to read and quote the original radio transmission transcript at the White House, none of what they quote is on the existing tape. Salinger said he sent his copy back to the Kennedy Library, where he got it, but it is now missing. Who could have edited that tape and made the transcripts disappear? Who? 

Knight returns to the notion that Kennedy’s murder was perceived as a Paradise Lost. He writes,

“..(is November 1963 when it all began to go horribly wrong?), and the role of counterfactual speculations about the significance of the assassination for the story of the Vietnam War (had he lived, would Kennedy have withdrawn US troops?). […] hagiographic accounts […] in effect turned the assassination into a mythical drama, a stirring story of a fallen warrior hero whose outline is more reminiscent of Arthurian legends than contemporary politics. […] After the assassination, Kennedy admirers promoted him as a liberal hero whose untimely death meant that his potential for energising change was never fulfilled. […] This interpretation of Kennedy’s death redirects attention from his arguably quite limited actual achievements to the wishful fantasy of what might have been.”

BK NOTES: Well, let's see, he got a good view of how the CIA and military work at the Bay of Pigs, and resolved the Cuban Missile Crisis through diplomacy rather than war, irritating the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who wanted to go to war. And he was brokering a back channel diplomacy with Castro, declined to commit more than advisors to Vietnam, and refused to approve the CIA-Mafia plots to kill Castro. That was enough to get him killed. 

Knight does a god job in challenging the deep-rooted myth of a nation and world cheated of a glorious destiny. In truth, there was no such cataclysm in the world – or, indeed, in the USA. Virtually nothing changed. The idea that Kennedy’s death was a turning-point in history is a fanciful, romantic notion.

BK NOTES: The Kennedy assassination IS STILL a Turning-point in history because the official records are still being withheld, we still don't know the total truth, and the Supreme Court will soon review the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request regarding JFK assassination records that may be a decisive decision for all still withheld records on many issues other than the assassination of the President, not a fanciful, romantic notion, but a cold blooded one. 

Chapter 4 examines ‘The Official Version’. There are, of course, two ‘official versions’, The Warren Commission and the House Select Committee on Assassinations. Neither one was perfect but both agreed on the key issues; Oswald fired three shots, one missed and two hit Kennedy. One struck him in the head and killed him and one passed through his body and struck Governor Connally. Both investigations also concluded that Oswald had attempted to murder Maj Gen Walker (Rtd.) in April, 1963.

BK NOTES: Yes, and both official inquiries were corrupted - the Warren Report by the FBI not informing them of the Hosty Note they destroyed, and the CIA by failure to inform them of the CIA-Mafia plots to kill Hitler. WC attorney Sam Stern told the HSCA that had they know those two things they would have conducted a different type of investigation, and not relying totally on the FBI and CIA to be truthful. And indeed the Walker shooting was a key aspect of the crime, and should be dealt with in detail, but I'm sure neither Knight nor Ryder will bother to do so. 

Knight has praise and criticism for both investigations. For the most part (though not always) he is fair. He is right to note that the WC did duck the issue of Oswald’s political motivation. He writes, “This tendency to depoliticise Oswald is obviously significant in the light of the overall implicit task of the Commission in calming rumours about foreign conspiracy,..”

BK NOTES: NO, it is not calming rumours about a foreign conspiracy, it was a domestic conspiracy that they didn't want to investigate. They tried to politicize Oswald as a Russian defector, Fair Play for Cuba Committee advocate who tried to get a visa to Cuba and thus blame the assassination on Castro, but LBJ didn't go along with that so they fell back on the depoliticized deranged lone nut scenario that is also wrong.

As a general observation of the WC report, he notes that, “..there are hundreds of pages of barely relevant testimony, an obsessive accumulation of documents that prove little or nothing..[…] There are case-making items such as the backyard photos, […] but there are also items that are tangential at best, and ludicrously incongruous at worse.”\

BK NOTES: It's not just the WC that includes tons of documents that prove little or nothing, MOST of the records released under the JFK Act includes literally millions of documents that have nothing to do with the assassination or even JFK, but were part of the document dump to make it more difficult for researchers to locate the relevant records. 

All of that is true. The Warren Commission made the mistake of trying to over-prove its case. In so doing it provided critics with an abundance of material to conflate, misrepresent and lie about. It made a rod for its own back.

The HSCA, of course, concluded that Kennedy had been murdered as the result of a ‘probable’ conspiracy. It’s reason for concluding that was the ‘acoustic evidence’ which supposedly revealed a fourth shot – a shot that Oswald could not have fired. Four members of the Committee were not persuaded by the evidence and three of them were able to include their dissenting views in the Final report. Knight notes that, “As several members of the HSCA already suspected, the acoustic evidence was soon found to be flawed, thereby undermining the major claim that there was a second gunman and hence a probable conspiracy.” (p. 72)

BK NOTES: First off, if you talk to the first chief council or second chief council of the HSCA neither will tell you that their conclusion of conspiracy rested only on the acoustical evidence. Sprague suspected the CIA while Blakey thought the Mafia responsible. And a bunch of scientists and a rock drummer tried to dismiss the HSCA Acoustical study and issued a paper full of words, but the only way to debunk a scientific study is to replicate it, and that has never been done, so there's no proof the Acoustics were flawed until that second study is conducted, and it will be eventually. 
This fascinating chapter moves to its close with, “.. the assassinations of JFK, MLK and RFK were not an unprecedented calamity in US history, but only the latest in a series of outbursts of political violence that had seen previous peaks in the 1820s, 1890s and 1930s.

BK NOTES: Those three assassinations remain unprecedented calamities in US history but they aren't even history yet, as we have yet to see the still withheld JFK records, MLK's first civil rights case is just beginning to be recorded, and we haven't discovered who fired the bullets that killed RFK. 

On page 67 he quotes from the 1968, NCCPV report ‘..assassinations in the U. S. are usually not part of concerted efforts to redirect the course of politics through the removal of leaders; the main effects of assassinations have been not a change in political direction but a sense of personal shock and despair coupled with a willingness to believe in conspiracy theories,’

BK NOTES: Well, JFK was in power and leading the nation in one direction, his brains were shot out and new people took over the government and took the nation in another direction - it was a coup d'etat, and included shock and despair, and has nothing to do with belief in conspiracies. I think both Knight and Ryder must have conspiracy theories on the brain as they keep referring to them, when I thought we were investigating homicides. 
Knight’s fifth chapter examines ‘The Unofficial Version’ of the assassination. These are my ‘selected highlights’:

“There is a vast literature on the Kennedy assassination, with over two thousand books, countless newspaper and magazine articles, along with novels and films, not to mention the dozens of  journals and websites devoted to the topic. The overwhelming majority develop a conspiracy theory of one stripe or another.” (p. 75)

Indeed they do and they are all different. Conspiracy theories are like religions; they can’t all be right but they can all be wrong.

BK NOTES: Well since the official version of events can not be true, one of the conspiracy theories must be right, as the assassination only happened one way. 

The author casts his eye over some of the earliest ‘critics’.

Thomas Buchanan is noted as being the first to have a book published about the assassination. This was on the shelves before the Warren Commission had even finished its investigation.

Joachim Joesten is mentioned and Knight accurately describes him as a “..one time member of the Communist Party,..” (p. 77)

BK NOTES: Yea, yea, Joestein was one of the KGB's dizinformation agents, along with Mark Lane and others. Pure hokum. And it is Knight and Ryder who are doing the bidding of the CIA in writing this trash.
He points out that,“But with the opening up of the Soviet archives after the fall of the Berlin Wall, evidence has emerged that Buchanan and Joesten might ave been motivated not by an implicit and vague ideological European fixation with conspiracy theories of political succession, but by a quite explicit disinformation campaign directed by the KGB..” (p. 78)

Naturally, Mark Lane and his ‘method’ are both discussed. Knight concludes that, “Lane’s approach is thus somewhat disingenuous..” (p.79) That’s putting it very mildly indeed. Not mentioned in the book is the fact that Lane’s European lecture road-show was partly funded by a KGB intermediary.

BK NOTES: Yea, with the opening of the Berlin Wall (I was there), KGB archivist V. Mitrokin tried to defect to the CIA but they wouldn't have him so he went to the British, who have worked closely with the KGB in the past - especially at Cambridge where Mitrokin's writer is based. To establish his bonifides Mitrokin gave up a NSA file clerk who passed on many documents to the KGB, and when he was arrested - thanks to Mitrokin, he told the judge at his preliminary hearing that he saw a NSA document that named the real assassin of President Kennedy. When a reporter asked him as he was being led away for the name, he said - Luis Angel Castillo. Oh, my. But I'm sure you won't read that in Knight's book. And I think Ryder is affiliated with the hallowed ivy strewn walls of Cambridge. 

Chapter 6 Literature

In this chapter Knight examines some of the most well-known literature that has been inspired by the assassination. He discusses the books of Mailer, De Lillo, Ellroy and Pynchon among others. I only skimmed this chapter as I don’t read novels or any fiction.

Chapter 7 Visual Culture and film

Much of this chapter is given over to discussing the Zapruder film; what it shows, what it doesn’t show and what it suggests. Knight gives a potted history of the film from the moment of its creation up until the present day. Also, of course, we read of how the film has been used and interpreted by just about everybody who has ever viewed it.

Other famous images are discussed; the back-yard photographs and other Dealey Plaza photographs are considered. Unfortunately, when discussing Ike Altgens, the author makes a rare mistake and I think that it should be noted. Knight writes, “There are few photos by professional photographers of the shooting in Dealey Plaza. The only one of note – and even that one was taken after the fatal head shot itself – is James ‘Ike’ Altgens black and white photo of Secret Service Agent Clint Hill stepping onto the back of the presidential limousine to help Jackie Kennedy as she scrambles toward the rear.”

In fact, Altgens took six other photos and one of them – usually referred to as Altgens ‘5’ - was taken whilst the gunfire was still occurring. It’s regarded by many as the most important still image of the assassination. It contains a wealth of detail and information but, regrettably, our author seems to have omitted it.

Oliver Stone’s ‘JFK’ draws the author’s attention and criticism. He writes, “Although Stone might claim that the film is merely presenting multiple perspectives, in reality it makes a passionate case for a particular theory, namely that Kennedy was killed because he was going to bring an end to the Cold War in general and the Vietnam War in particular.”

BK NOTES: We haven't heard the last of Oliver Stone, whose documentary film Destiny Betrayed, with Jim DiEugenio, should be released soon. I think that is why there is a flurry of anti-Stone propaganda emerging. 
Knight restates his point, “JFK continues to present Kennedy as a blemish-free president of tragic stature, more of a Cold War dove than the hawk he was in reality.”

BK NOTES: How can Kennedy be blemish-free if his brains were blown out? 

Peter Knight’s brief ‘conclusion’ makes reference to the age-old “historical controversies” which grew-up following Pearl Harbour and the Lincoln assassination. He writes that these historical events, “..are surrounded by a thriving subculture of conspiracy theory and revisionist history, along with the usual historical tourism that such controversies generate, but neither can be said to have any real impact on present-day politics.”


BK NOTES: This is the fake revisionist history. 

For my own summation, I’d like to offer some of my favourite lines from this outstanding book. The first is a direct quote from ‘The Day Kennedy Was Shot’ by Jim Bishop.

“..the simple became complex; the obvious, obtuse...The more people read, the more certain they became that they had not heard the facts.”

This is absolutely true of the conspiracy-buff. Bishop’s observation was true in 1968 and it still is.

BK NOTES: Yes it is still true because we still have not heard the facts - why are the assassination records still being withheld years after the JFK Act required their full release? 
On pages 99-101, Knight writes, “..it can seem that JFK conspiracy theories tend not toward a comforting closure, but to an infinite regress of suspicion, a ‘vertigo of interpretations’. […] As much as assassination researchers speak of their determination to bring closure to the case, they also often seem to have a personal investment in keeping research going, of sustaining a research dialogue almost for the sake of discussion – not to mention a financial investment in prolonging the process of inquiry, with the proliferation of convention speaking and web merchandising funding the amateur research network.”

BK NOTES: Well Priscilla Johnson, Max Holland, Gerald Posner, Vincent Bugliosi and Norman Mailer all got six figure advances and $20 million to play with, while I got a $3,000 grant from the Fund For Investigative Journalism - that I used to buy a round trip cross country AMTRACK pass that I used to visit and interview other researchers, witnesses and supects. The WC lawyers quickly raised a few million to counter the JFK movie, and they build the SPY Museum, the OSS museum and CIA covert action museums to glorify such things, while real investigators and researchers in the only "research network" I know, like John Newman, Bill Simpich, Larry Hancock and others have to scrounge around to get around. It's a falacy that people make a living off of this shit. 

Peter Knight hits the nail on the head. The ‘Researchers’ are nothing more than a self-interest group of hobbyists. They pursue their nebulous quarry with the same pointless zeal as those who search for Noah’s Ark or the Holy Grail. They know that their goal doesn’t even exist but, it’s the chase they want, not the kill. They’ve got a hobby for life. These people will continue on an ever-cycling treadmill, getting nowhere whilst covering the same old, familiar ground repeatedly.

BK NOTES: Well I am getting somewhere. I have figured out the MO Modus Operandi of Dealey Plaza, do not retread the old familiar ground repeatedly, and am confident we can wrap up the JFK case to a legal and moral certainty within a few years. 

In the 56 years since the Dallas murders, the critics and ‘research community’ have accomplished absolutely nothing. Despite countless books, conventions and essays, they have not overturned one single conclusion of the official investigations. 

BK NOTES: We have overturned the official conclusions in the mind of the general public and citizens - 80 percent of whom do not believe JFK was killed by a lone gunman, we got Congress to pass the JFK Act of 1992, thanks to Oliver Stone, and released millions of records that real historians are using and citing in books on a wide variety of subjects. Since Knight is allegedly an academic, he should recognize that as a major accomplishment. Indeed, the US Supreme Court will be considering and ruling on one of the issues related to the JFK assassination records this fall, so that should put the story back on the front pages and TV news. 

Indeed, the only conclusion that has ever been overturned was the ‘probable conspiracy’ that was postulated by the HSCA. The National Academy of Science empanelled eleven experts (collectively referred to as the Committee on Ballistic Acoustics) and it found that the HSCA’s acoustic evidence was wrong. There were no gunshots at all on the dictabelt tape. None.

BK NOTES: There is no new information in this book or this review worthy of noting. None. 

This is a superb book.

barry

 Peter Knight's lucid and intelligent essay is a fine summary of a big subject

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 3 March 2013

This short 166-page 2007 paperback publication is authored by Peter Knight, Senior Lecturer in American Studies at The University of Manchester UK, whose other published works include `Conspiracy Culture: from Kennedy to the X-Files' and `Conspiracy Nation'. The book presents an overview of the 1963 JFK assassination from historical, political, cultural and sociological perspectives.

Following a detailed introduction, a long chapter covers `the official version' in which the history of the Warren Commission Report, the Clark Panel and the work of the HSCA are summarised with admirable brevity but including a useful level of detail, highlighting their perceived shortcomings.

A companion-chapter follows: `the unofficial version' (should be `versions'). The author here presents the multiplicity of conspiracy narratives which have found traction in the public imagination since the 1960s. The works of Epstein, Lane, Weisberg, Penn Jones, Josiah Thompson and Sylvia Meagher are well summarised, and the evolution of the large number of mutually contradictory theories about motives for the assassination are covered:

"The list of theories and suspects began to seem endless: writers blamed the CIA, FBI, renegades from both, the Secret Service, Dallas police, Cuban exiles, the Mafia, Dallas oil millionaires, right-wing Texans, left-wing sympathisers, Corsican Mafia, President Johnson, J. Edgar Hoover, Jimmy Hoffa, the military-industrial complex, the international banking cartel, the three hobos picked up in Dealy Plaza right after the shooting, and just about every combination of these groups" (p92)

The Soviet KGB origin of `US government conspiracy' and particularly `the CIA were involved' was discovered in the Soviet archives following the fall of the Berlin Wall, a disinformation campaign seeded into European political journals in the 1960s to ferment distrust of their government in the American population. Few details about this are given as the book is meant to be only an overview, but source references are quoted (p78).

Knight's writing is not without humour:

"The spoof newspaper `The Onion' captured the sense of a frenzied overproduction of theories in their headline `Kennedy slain by CIA, Mafia, Castro, LBJ, Teamsters, Freemasons: President shot 129 times from 43 different angles'" (p93).

Two further chapters cover the legacy of literature based around the event, and `Visual Culture and Film' including a long and detailed history of Dallas dressmaker Abraham Zapruder's amateur 19-second film ("the Rosetta Stone of the assassination"), and Oliver Stone's disingenuous but lucrative exercise in Hollywood myth-making `JFK'.

There is a short concluding chapter, and two pages of `suggested further reading' which covers the whole gamut of theories and perspectives.

Knight's stance is essentially neutral; he has no axe to grind, does not push the lone gunman theory or any one of the multiplicity of mutually contradictory conspiracy theories. He retains a refreshingly intelligent perspective focusing on the iconic & cultural importance of the event, retrospectively seen by many as `the time when everything changed, when America lost its innocence.' The book's brevity and (for its size) thoroughness, its literate readable style and the author's clearly encyclopaedic knowledge of all aspects of the `JFK industry' makes it easy to recommend to the casual reader unfamiliar with the mountain of facts and theories piled on the JFK assassination. For the dyed-in-the-wool conspiracy theorist ideologically committed to one theory or another, the good-humoured neutrality and succinct writing style of Knight's book might come as a breath of fresh air.

Patrick Collins

 Deserves an award for condensing such a huge subject into a highly readable and informative 180 pages

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 25 February 2008

Peter Knight's scholarly book is surprisingly comprehensive given that it's a relatively short work. It succeeds in being both a fine introduction to the case and in being an incisive and fascinating history of the assassination in both American and World history and indeed in popular culture. The book provides an interesting and very reasonable and balanced assessment of most of the key aspects of the case - a summary of the Warren Report and all other official investigations, the major conspiracy theories, the problems with eye witness reliability, the so called problems with the Single Bullet Theory, the fatal head shot and issues with the flawed autopsy and so on.

But the book goes much further than providing a brief but very succinct history of the case, it also provides an excellent record of key works on the assassination together with some highly interesting observations regarding the event in news, fiction, film and even art. More over the author also finds the space to explain how and why the event has had such an impact on modern America and suggests that actually some degree of exaggeration has occurred in respect of the events true impact at the time. The book also examines the concept of the "conspiracy theory" in principle and asks if the Kennedy assassination has in fact changed the nature of conspiracy thinking giving some considerable thought to Oliver Stones film JFK and the unfortunate effect that that film has had - that a significant percentage of the American public believe Oliver Stones work to be an accurate rendition of the event, which it clearly is not.

It is actually quite rare to get a book on this subject that is essentially neutral, but still maintains a tantalizing glimpse into what author Vincent Bugliosi calls a "bottomless pit". When you consider that Philip Knight covers just about every angle on this case in some 180 pages, it is quite an achievement. If you are conspiracy buff I'd recommend this book as a dose of common sense. Peter Knight doesn't offer a personal conclusion in terms of was there or was there not a conspiracy, but its clear the author's intention was to provide a thorough assessment of the event and its place in history from 1963 to date in a resoundingly non sensationalist manner - frankly a breath of fresh air when you consider the utter none sense that has been written about the case.

Whilst the author is critical of the Warren Commission in respect of its failure to clarify and set to rest a good many of what would become perceived "unanswered questions", I rather suspect he believes Oswald acted alone, but that conclusion is not the aim of the book, its rather to educate the reader and bring some degree of common sense into a subject that has now been somehow lost into such a huge body of work that its almost impossible for any one, bar the dedicated student of the case, to make some degree of semblance as to what happened when Kennedy was shot and to understand the difference between the event itself and what it has become in popular culture - something far greater, far more reaching than it was. A resounding accomplishment - it joins some four hundred books on the subject in my collection and I would place it high high on the my list of recommended reading.

 Excellent (if a little short) book!!!!!!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 19 February 2013

Upon recommendation from another reviewer I purchased this book and I am very pleased I did, a very concise introduction into the JFK Assassination for someone who has only had an interest in this subject matter for a few months, the book does not lean to either conspiracy or lone assassin, therefore is very neutral in explaining what occured and how it has been portrayed in America over the years.

A good starting point for someone who is interested in the subject, only downside is that it is a little short (only 150 odd pages)

Lisette de Montmartre

 Clear, Comprehensive, Compelling

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 24 April 2008

The Kennedy Assassination has spawned its own conspiracy industry. Aptly described as a 'bottomless pit', it is equally a many-headed hydra, with each claim and counterclaim giving birth to dozens of others. And yet among the mountains of material there are few--if any--books that examine the event with the clarity of Peter Knight's book. Knight addresses both the official and unofficial versions, the significance of the assassination in US history, and its impact on American culture, in calm, rational prose that doesn't get bogged down in the excessive detail that threatens to capsize so much writing on the subject. This concise and extremely readable book contains probably all you need to know about the Kennedy Assassination. Highly recommended.