Book Review: Killing Kennedy

Killing Kennedy: The End of Camelot, by: Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard, Henry Holt and Company, New York, 2012.

This was a very good look back.  Some of the things in this book were done very well; well most of it was done well, there were just some things I didn’t like.  I didn’t like the way Kennedy was made out to be such a womanizer.  They focused, initially in the book, on some of his sexual conquests, including Marilyn Monroe.  However the chapters on Martin Luther King I thought were well done (although they also talked about his sexual exploits as uncovered by the FBI), particularly the conversation about his “I have a dream” speech. 

Of course the description of the actual murder of John F. Kennedy has been heard many times before.  This book brought to my knowledge some things I hadn’t realized.  It was the girdle the president was wearing which made it so he did not slump down, and was a more inviting target for the third bullet.  Also the statements of Jackie Kennedy with her dying husband to her side I had not heard before.  She was very candid.  “They have killed my husband,” “ They blew his head off.”   I could not imagine being in that situation.

There are also some insights about Lee Harvey Oswald.  That his motivation was to make a name for himself and prove he wasn’t a failure.  This section is called “Evil Wins.”  That is what Oswald represented, evil.

I enjoyed this book.  It talks about the legacy of Camelot, and how it died the day the route was selected, which made a turn in front of the Texas Book Depository.  Of course the Depository was where Oswald was working.  This made for a temptation he could not pass up.  A slow target, and he armed with a high powered scope, and a history as a marksman.