Rating: 
Summary: Fiction at its best
Review: This book impressed me greatly. I had just read DeLillo's Mao II, which I had also thought was amazing, and was worried it would be the same theme rewritten - but this is not so. I find this to be an extremely interesting take on the JFK assassination, one that made me think about long after I had finished. I think this is a very good book to start in with DeLillo - while Mao II is awesome, it is less like DeLillo than Libra. He showed the balance Lee hung in (Lee being a Libra, hence the title) exceedingly well. DeLillo is one of the few last great authors of our time.
Rating:
Summary: A whodunnit where you already know the answer
Review: Not being a major scholar in the conspiracies and ideas bouncing around about the Kennedy assassination, I have absolutely no idea how factual Delillo is being in this book as concerned with major figures, events, etc. And I really don't care. The only thing that I used when deciding whether I liked the book or not is whether it entertained me and made me think. And it sure did. Delillo presents another version of the famed assassination, focusing more on the mind and manners of one Lee Harvey Oswald and how he might have got sucked into a conspiracy to kill the President. Or something. As the book starts out, the goal is to not kill the President but to make it seem like someone is trying so that everyone will blame the Cubans (the Bay of Pigs invasion still fresh in everyone's mind). From there, things get . . . strange. The plot flips back and forth from Oswald and how he goes about his short life (his mother gets most of the best monologues) from America to Russia and back again, all the while interspersing it with the various characters who interacted and might have had something to do with the assassination. Which makes everything confusing and earlier portions of the book slow, as you're trying to figure out just where this is all going. However, this is a slow burning intense book, where the suspense leading up to the action is longer than the event itself. Delillo uses his masterful command of the English language to craft an insular paranoid world for the reader, without going nutty with conspiracies, he puts forward a fictional version of how things might have happened and makes you believe it. Everyone is drawn three dimensionally, including Oswald, who is seen as more of a tragic figure but at the same time knows exactly what he's doing and how people will perceive him forever. Delillo's writing is full of surprising phrases, just when you think he's dipping into the waters of Hemmingway and not being that descriptive, he throws out seemingly random comments that make everything fall into place perfectly, or turn everything on its head and make you reconsider. By the end, his writing has been polished to a spare, desolate beauty and ending of the book is one of the most touching I've read in a while. With the events of that grim day in November already spelled out for everyone, Delillo's makes it his task to make you know the people (perhaps) and he passes that with flying colors. If you can keep the time lines (he mucks things up even more by throwing in some guy who is researching the assassination for the CIA years later) and the people straight, you'll have a grand time. Whether you think it was a lone gunman or an army of them, you won't go wrong with this book.
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Summary: Not just a conspiracy theory.
Review: Don DeLillo has created a masterpiece with Libra. He goes beyond average conspiracy theories by taking the reader through the why,not just the how. From his riveting descriptions of Oswald's troubled adolescent years to a Cuban coverup, DeLillo truely guides the reader through maze of politics, passions, and conspiracy. DeLillo encompasses many literary elements into his masterpiece as well. His short, delclaritive sentences and his allusions to other great works of literature allow the reader to visualize and feel the conspiracy as it unfolds. His constant use of metaphors to show the inner workings of his characters' minds reveal situations with the utmost of clarity. His twisting, apparently disorganized hopping from character to character, from past to present, add depth and understanding to his version of the Kennedy assassination. Lastly, he makes his unverfied facts seem inexonerably truthful and exact through these elements. Libra is truely more than normal conspiracy theory novels and DeLillo deserves much praise for producing such an exciting and plausible novel.
Rating: 
Summary: libra...the freakiness is out there
Review: I would give DeLillio's Libra one thumb up, and, how should Isay, one thumb down. First of all, I like the novel because it made all the characters come to life. Before I read Libra, I did not know much more about Lee Harvey Oswald than that he was some criminal that shot the president. But now, I see Oswald as a regular person with feelings,ambitions, and disappointments who has been driven into killing by plans of others. It was also frightening, that I actually sometimes felt like the plan to stage a fake assassination on JFK was an okay thing to do. Don't get me wrong, I do not support criminal actions, but through DeLillo's portrayal of the characters, he really changed my thinking during reading. Maybe that is why some see his writing as dangerous: he makes people think things that they do not want to think. DeLillo also makes conspiracies and the cover up of evidence by FBI, CIA (you name it) become reality. Such stories are told in movies, for example the Conspiracy Theory, but we still may not believe them because they are far fetched. But reading Libra brought me a step closer to believing in all those things. Even if it is only fiction and a theory based on history, it really convinced me that the events and characters were reality. Not only does DeLillo bring the characters and plot to life, he also makes the book enjoyable with some of his writing style. For example, he sometimes uses short, insightful, declarative phrases or sentences that stop the flow of a paragraph: "There is a world inside a world." (Don't you love this one?) These, seemingly random placed, insightful comments made me wonder about their purpose and so let me sink deeper into the novel. Additionally, DeLillo manages to bring a "freakiness and creepines" into Libra when he compares Oswald to JFK or Jack Ruby to Jack Karlinski as if they are the same person with exactly opposite lives, for example. More weirdness is added to the literary equation when DeLillo describes coincidences almost imploring that there may be some greater force behind them. Also the "glow" of JFK is unforgettable and strange. Even though I may sound like I totally loved this book, it is not true. Libra does have some really great twists, vivid descriptions of characters, and also some great language which I liked, but all this is degraded because DeLillo's writing is really tiresome. He jumps from character to character, from one plot to the other, and so makes Libra more confusing than it has to be. Some may argue that this is a form of art and that Delillo should be applauded for it, but I can only say that it made me dislike reading some parts of the book.
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Summary: Libra Review
Review: I found this book to be acceptably put together with vivid descriptions of settings and emotions. Delillo made a great interpertation of a killers mind. Overall the book has a stirring plot, but I found it slow. The ending was especially slow; I kept on waiting for it to get to the point. I would recommend this book to others if they have knowledge of the political and governmental issues of JFK's time.
Rating: 
Summary: Intrigue
Review: The novel is of an incredible calibur. DeLillo spins this fictional web around historical facts to make it a singular entity. Though the literary effects were a blast (two thumbs), the novel seemed to have a difficult time formulating a plot. The plot is obviously there,however, it did not progress at the usual rate of great novels. It is fortunate that this is not a usual novel. DeLillo focuses more on the little details of an everyday action with a unique effect. Lee H. Oswald was a loose screw without a doubt but through his expertise, DeLillo manages to make the reader think that he was just a dysfunctial intellectual that was dragged around by the invisible leash of conspiracy. This very clever and (for a lack of a better word) creative chronology of JFK's death provides the reader with topics to ponder and question about for it is still a mystery. If the reader is looking for a slow but action packed plot and a thriller to think about, this is the epitome of what you've been looking for.
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Summary: Libra Review
Review: Don DeLillo's use of figuritive language and his use of varying sentence patterns made the reading very interesting. This one was deffinately a page turner. DeLillo takes one of the most popular assasinations of world history and tells it from a different point of view. The reader gets to look at the whole incident from the perspective of Oswald. While at some parts I still did not know what was going on in the book and found it very confusing, i loved it, just for that. It was not some easy reading, predictable book. It made you think and thats what I loved about it most. I would recommend it to anybody!
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Summary: Angel's Comments
Review: In LibraDon DeLilo takes a factual event (the Kenndey assasination) and adds a fictional twist. He develops many fictional characters which add to the overall conspiracy based plot. In Libra DeLillo not only trys to change "history" by giving plausable insights into what happened before the assaination, he also attempts to depict a man's life prior to the assaination. This 456 page book is attention grabing from the first to the last page.
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Summary: Worth some thinking...
Review: Reading Don DeLillo's Libra was definitely worth the while. I have found that the style of the author's writing to be confusing but think about it, it was the intensity of the book that kept me so anxious about turning the page. To this day, the exact details to the murder are still not clear, but one thing is for sure: DeLillo has brilliantly depicted his belief of what went on during the time period of the assassination. Don DeLillo did a great job of mixing facts and fictions, making them all seem so real to the reader. Even though some of DeLillo's implications seem unrealistic, the thought of "what if" what Don DeLillo wrote was true is definitely worth some thinking.
Rating:
Summary: conspiracy theory
Review: Libra elucidates one of America's darkest moments: the assassination of J.F.K. DeLillo does an amazing job combining fact and fiction, weaving them together, where the many reporters and journalist had failed. But many critics have found many faults with Libra. The conspiracy theories, the true show behind the scene, they find those ideas unrealistic and uncensured. WHY?
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