Assassination And Commemoration

The shots that killed President John F. Kennedy in November 1963 were fired from the sixth floor of a nondescript warehouse at the edge of Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas. That floor in the Texas School Book Depository became a museum exhibit in 1989 and was designated part of a National Historic Landmark District in 1993. This book recounts the slow and painful process by which a city and a nation came to terms with its collective memory of the assassination and its aftermath. Stephen Fagin begins Assassination and Commemoration by retracing the events that culminated in Lee Harvey Oswald’s shots at the presidential motorcade. He vividly describes the volatile political climate of midcentury Dallas as well as the shame that haunted the city for decades after the assassination. The book highlights the decades-long work of people determined to create a museum that commemorates a president and recalls the drama and heartbreak of November 22, 1963. Fagin narrates the painstaking day-to-day work of cultivating the support of influential citizens and convincing boards and committees of the importance of preservation and interpretation. Today, The Sixth Floor Museum helps visitors to interpret the depository and Dealey Plaza as sacred ground and a monument to an unforgettable American tragedy. One of the most popular historic sites in Texas, it is a place of quiet reflection, of edification for older Americans who remember the Kennedy years, and of education for the large and growing number of younger visitors unfamiliar with the events the museum commemorates. Like the museum itself, Fagin’s book both carefully studies a community’s confrontation with tragedy and explores the ways we preserve the past.

Examines how Israeli society has commemorated Yitzhak Rabin.

Secret Service agent Clint Hill reveals the stories behind the iconic images of the five tragic days surrounding President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in this 60th anniversary edition of the New York Times bestseller. On November 22, 1963, three shots were fired in Dallas, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and the world stopped for four days. For an entire generation, it was the end of an age of innocence. That evening, a photo ran on the front pages of newspapers across the world, showing a Secret Service agent jumping on the back of the presidential limousine in a desperate attempt to protect the President and Mrs. Kennedy. That agent was Clint Hill. Now Hill commemorates the sixtieth anniversary of the tragedy with this stunning book containing more than 150 photos, each accompanied by his incomparable insider account of those terrible days. A story that has taken Hill half a century to tell, this is a “riveting, stunning narrative” (Herald & Review, Illinois) of personal and historical scope. Besides the unbearable grief of a nation and the monumental consequences of the event, the death of JFK was a personal blow to a man sworn to protect the first family, and who knew, from the moment the shots rang out in Dallas, that nothing would ever be the same.

Secret Service agent Clint Hill reveals the stories behind the iconic images of the five tragic days surrounding President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in this 60th anniversary edition of the New York Times bestseller. On November 22, 1963, three shots were fired in Dallas, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and the world stopped for four days. For an entire generation, it was the end of an age of innocence. That evening, a photo ran on the front pages of newspapers across the world, showing a Secret Service agent jumping on the back of the presidential limousine in a desperate attempt to protect the President and Mrs. Kennedy. That agent was Clint Hill. Now Hill commemorates the sixtieth anniversary of the tragedy with this stunning book containing more than 150 photos, each accompanied by his incomparable insider account of those terrible days. A story that has taken Hill half a century to tell, this is a “riveting, stunning narrative” (Herald & Review, Illinois) of personal and historical scope. Besides the unbearable grief of a nation and the monumental consequences of the event, the death of JFK was a personal blow to a man sworn to protect the first family, and who knew, from the moment the shots rang out in Dallas, that nothing would ever be the same.

Lee Harvey Oswald's assassination of President Kennedy in 1963 remains one of the most horrifying and hotly debated crimes in American history. Just as perplexing as the assassination is the assassin himself; the 24-year-old Oswald's hazy background and motivations—and his subsequent murder at the hands of Jack Ruby—make him an intriguing yet frustratingly enigmatic figure. Because Oswald briefly defected to the Soviet Union, some historians allege he was a Soviet agent. But as Peter Savodnik shows in The Interloper, Oswald's time in the U.S.S.R. reveals a stranger, more chilling story. Oswald ventured to Russia at the age of 19, after a failed stint in the U.S. Marine Corps and a childhood spent shuffling from address to address with his unstable, needy mother. Like many of his generation, Oswald struggled for a sense of belonging in postwar American society, which could be materialistic, atomized, and alienating. The Soviet Union, with its promise of collectivism and camaraderie, seemed to offer an alternative. While traveling in Europe, Oswald slipped across the Soviet border, soon settling in Minsk where he worked at a radio and television factory. But Oswald quickly became just as disillusioned with his adopted country as he had been with the United States. He spoke very little Russian, had difficulty adapting to the culture of his new home, and found few trustworthy friends; indeed most, it became clear, were informing on him to the KGB. After nearly three years, Oswald returned to America feeling utterly defeated and more alone than ever—and as Savodnik shows, he began to look for an outlet for his frustration and rage. Drawing on groundbreaking research, including interviews with Oswald's friends and acquaintances in Russia and the United States, The Interloper brilliantly evokes the shattered psyche not just of Oswald himself, but also of the era he so tragically defined.

Reads like a pacey, page-turning, cold war political thriller." Dermot O'Leary This is the story of JFK's assassination as told from the frontline: it is about the people - from the highest to the lowest - who were caught up in that four-day whirlwind in November 1963. From Dallas nightclub reporter Tony Zoppi, who found himself carrying the president's casket; Secret Service agent Clint Hill beating his hands in despair on the trunk of the limousine as he watches Kennedy die; Howard Brennan, a construction worker on a lunch break watching a man take aim on the motorcade with a rifle; reporter Hugh Aynesworth with only an electricity bill on which to write notes for the scoop of his career; DJ John Peel a few feet from Oswald as he's questioned by the press; to Robert Kennedy sitting in the dark in the back of an empty army truck, waiting for his brother's body to arrive. The Assassination of JFK: Minute by Minute is pure chronological narrative, giving a blow by blow account of the terrible events as they unfolded. "Packed with vivid detail, and arranged in the minute by minute style that Jonathan Mayo has pioneered, this account of the murder of John F Kennedy gripped me from the first page to the last." Jeremy Vine

"War has been commemorated since ancient times. The recent First World War centenaries are proof that remembering conflict continues to produce strong feelings among people of all walks of life. But how, in the twenty-first century, can we do commemoration better? In particular, how can commemoration contribute to post-war reconciliation and reconstruction? In this book, a global roster of distinguished individuals - poets, an international human rights advocate, musicians, policy-makers, novelists, academics, a sculptor, a world-renowned architect, members of different faiths, composers, a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist and military veterans - debate these questions and ponder the future of commemoration. The book focuses on three modes of commemoration: Textual Commemoration - commemoration in writing and images; Monumental Commemoration - monuments, architecture, museums, sculptures, battlefields and sites of mourning; Aural Commemoration - music, sound and silence. Polemics and reflections together with poetry and creative prose movingly illuminate a subject that is sensitive and sobering but which also speaks to our common humanity"--