Rating: 
Summary: Incredibly COMPELLING: puts you THERE
Review: There has never been and may never be a book like this one. President Kennedy Has Been Shot combines the best of "oral history" (long-quotes from people who were there rather than a long newsmagazine-style narrative account) plus a pull-out-all-stops CD...that puts you BACK in 1963, even if you weren't born yet. Where was I? I had just finished a (terrible) speech to run (unsuccessfully) for jr high school vice president. I was self-absorbed after my first-ever serious public speech. Right after I spoke a teacher got up and said something, there was a gasp and people filed out to the buses (it was time to go). I asked a teacher what happened and he said the title of this book: "President Kennedy has been shot..." It doesn't matter if you lived through this time or not. The highly-detailed reminiscences plus excerpts from things said at time time -- coupled with the effective use in the book of text of key audio-news tracks on the incredible CD -- make this highly compelling. And you're shoved into 1963, whether you were alive then or not, when you hear the CD's radio and television news bulletins, the shooting of Oswald -- but especially the loud, shocked GASP from the crowd when the Boston Symphony's conductor tells the crowd that the President was assasinated. And then you hear the mournful gasp as he says he will play a funeral march... It's all there in the text and the CD. Including things you didn't know at the time: authentic audio of Lady Bird Johnson's dramatic diary dictations, tapes of private phone calls by Johnson to J Edgar Hoover, Rose Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr, and a slew of news correspondents trying to cover a story. In the text you see how they covered it; in the CD you hear how some of them emotionally lost it. This is THE amazingly-priced multimedia packet to get anyone who wants to learn more, recall, or learn for the first time about what happened on that awful Nov. 22, 1963 and on those wrenching days after it. The CD is worth the price of the book and CD; the book is worth the price of the book and CD. I was reluctant to buy this at first. I thought it'd be seriously deficient and not do justice to the man or the tragedy. I was wrong on all counts.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting
Review: You cannot compare the assassination of John F. Kennedy to the terror attacks on September 11, 2001. I'm not saying one event is more horrible than the other. I'm just saying you cannot compare them. I was a little girl when Kennedy was killed, and I remember how it was. I also remember how I felt on September 11, 2001. I did not feel fear on or after November 22, 1963. I did not feel anger at foreigners, or wonder who or what else was going to be attacked. I and so many millions of Americans just felt shock, horror, and heartbreak for ourselves and for Mrs. Kennedy and her two children. This book would be a good addition to any library on the JFK assassination.
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