3 new books offer competing versions of jfk’s assassination
from new york observer: What can we hope to gain from a new book about the J.F.K. assassination? Surely not that it reveal some definitive truth about the events in Dallas, since with every passing year, with each frustrating release of declassified information, it becomes clear that no such revelation will ever be forthcoming. Rather, the best such a book can offer is a narrative that is plausible and in some way resonant; a story that provides the consolations of fiction rather than fact. If we can’t have the truth, then at least give us a myth we can believe in, a story with villains and heroes, with tragedy and some sense of redemption.

For its part, James W. Douglass’ JFK and the Unspeakable puts forward a scenario in which J.F.K. was cut down by a C.I.A.-administered plot that used Oswald as a patsy. Mr. Douglass, “a longtime peace activist,” believes Kennedy was murdered by shadowy forces because he was in the process of renouncing the cold war and all its toxic legacies: the arms race, Vietnam, the anti-Castro campaign, even predatory capitalism in the form of Big Steel