Customer Reviews
Definitive. - By: Sybok, 13 Sep 2008 
This book is a minute by minute and,in places, second by second recounting of the four daysin 1963 when JFK was assassinated. Personally I have become convinced now (after many years uncertainty) that Oswald (and Ruby) acted alone. That is the approach of this book.
If you can accept that hypothesis, then this is a rewarding piece of history.
"Some day you'll hang your heads in shame...My son [may be] the unsung hero of this episode."--Marguerite, Oswald's mother - By: Mary Whipple, 10 Jun 2008 When Vincent Bugliosi wrote Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, publishedin May, 2007, the predecessor of the book being reviewed here, It was widely regarded as his magnum opus, a towering masterpiece which took twenty years & 1648 pages to write. In this new book about the assassination, Bugliosi has now winnowed the original manuscript to approximately 500 pages, eliminating nearly all the material used by the conspiracy theorists because he has essentially disproved the conspiracy idea.
Four Daysin November, unlike Reclaiming History, is organized chronologically, giving dates & times, sometimes second by second, to make these real events come to life, & he includes seventy-nine photographs & drawings. The resulting achievement is stunning, an intensely readable & compelling work of scholarship which should eliminate, once & for all, the idea that there was more than one gunman. Photographs of the shooting, broken down into tiny fractions of a second, anatomical drawings of the wounds of President Kennedy & Governor Connolly, fingerprint evidencein the "sniper's nest" at the Book Depository, extensive photographs of the grassy knoll at the time of the shooting, & accounts from many eye-witnesses provide weighty, seemingly incontrovertible, evidence that Oswald was the lone shooter.
Bugliosi, who prosecuted Charles Mansonin the Tate-LaBianca trial & then went on to write Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders about that trial, is an accomplished writer who shares with the reader the kinds of details that he, as a prosecutor, counts as compelling evidence. At the same time, he is a painstaking recreator of scenes & observer of human nature. His intuitive sense of how people behave gives him an understanding of their psychology and, at times, motivations, all of which humanize this account of seemingly inhuman actions. Focusing on Lee Harvey Oswald & his dysfunctional family, the Dallas police & press, Jack Ruby & the underworld which he representsin Dallas, & the Kennedy family as it comes to grips not only with the loss of the President but with the loss of a loved one, Bugliosi provides an intimate & unforgettable look at a national tragedy which,in his hands, is also transformed into a moving series of personal tragedies.
Readers who begin this book will be as compelled to keep reading, as details unfold, as were all of us who lived through these events during that terrible long weekendin November, 1963, when we remained glued to our TV sets around the clock, & the entire country shut down. Bugliosi's total dedication to providing every relevant detail, his ability to convey the atmosphere & understandable confusion following the shooting, his sensitivity to the feelings of the innocent people & families who were permanently scarred by these events, & his honestyin recreating events without trying to make the facts "fit" an agenda, make this book a milestone of historical research. Certain to be honored with many awardsin the coming months, Four Daysin November endows terrible events with the respect--and finality--they deserve. Mary Whipple
