Booklists: suggested reading

 

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JFK Booklist

 

Fiction (all genres) and Nonfiction about JFK and his assassination.

 

Annotations are from Advance, the Ingram Book Magazine, unless noted.

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Fiction

• Paper Wings
  Author: Swick, Marly A.
  Publisher: HarperCollins $ 21 ISBN: 006017434x Date: 1996
  Booklist PW
  In her first novel, Swick introduces a memorable young woman whose coming of age coincides with an unexpected crisis in her family. Everyone in Suzanne's family acknowledges her mother's instability, yet no one has any idea why she suffers from bouts of depression. Paper Wings is a subtle and moving novel about a mother and daughter who struggle, hope and learn from each other how to emerge from the shadows of tragedy.
  Updated 10.24.05
• Corruption of Blood
  Author: Tanenbaum, Robert K.
  Publisher: Dutton $ 22.95 ISBN: 0525938702 Date: 1995
  PW
  In Tanenbaum's latest endeavor, Manhattan Assistant D.A. Butch Karp, star of Reversible Error, Material Witness and Justice Denied--the prosecutor with a perfect record of homicide convictions--takes on the most significant murder of this century: the JFK assassination.
  Updated 10.24.05

Nonfiction

• A Lady, First: My Life in the Kennedy White House and the AMerican Embassies of Paris and Rome
  Author: Baldridge, Letitia
  Publisher: Viking $ 26.95 ISBN:0670894532 Date: 2001
  PW
  Baldrige, who is perhaps best known as the author of several bestselling etiquette books, here writes of her life as a tenacious and successful woman who worked behind the scenes in some of the most exciting places after World War II--including the Kennedy White House--and at the height of America's international glory.
  Updated 10.24.05
• An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963
  Author: Dallek, Robert
  Publisher: Little Brown $ 30 ISBN: 0316172383 Date: 2003
  LJ PW
  An Unfinished Life is the first major, single-volume life of John F. Kennedy to be written by a historian in nearly four decades. The author draws upon previously unavailable material and never-before-opened archives to tell Kennedys' story.
  Updated 10.24.05
• JFK: Reckless Youth
  Author: Hamilton, Nigel
  Publisher: Random $ 30 ISBN: 0679412166 Date: 2006
  PW
  The first volume of a monumental new biography of John F. Kennedy--a blazingly readable but balanced portrait that details scores of astonishing new facts about the young JFK. Based on unprecedented access to previously unpublished papers and documents and more than 2,000 interviews, JFK is scholarly, candid, and sympathetic.
  Updated 10.24.05
• Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery
  Author: Mailer, Norman
  Publisher: Random $ 30 ISBN: 0679425357 Date: 1995
  Kirkus
  A startling portrait of Lee Harvey Oswald by the world-renowned author of The Executioner's Song. Mailer reconstructs the life of this curiously adventurous if doom-laden young man, giving a full account of the Minsk years, that hitherto uncharted period of Oswald's life.
  Updated 10.25.05
• Mrs. Paine's Garage: And the Murder of John F. Kennedy
  Author: Mallon, Thomas
  Publisher: Pantheon $ 22 ISBN: 0375421173 Date: 2002
  LJ
  Nearly 40 years have passed since Ruth Hyde Paine, a Quaker housewife in suburban Dallas, offered shelter and assistance to a young man named Lee Harvey Oswald and his Russian wife. This haunting portrait is an examination of how her life became inextricably tangled in the events of November 22, 1963.
  Updated 10.24.05
• President Kennedy: Profile in Power
  Author: Reeve, Richard
  Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 30 ISBN: 0671648799 Date: 1993
  Kirkus PW
  For 30 years, the portraits of JFK's Camelot have stood as gospel. Now, drawing on new interviews and previously unavailable files, records, and letters, Reeves provides the first truly objective appraisal of Kennedy's presidency. Here finally is the man as he was--for history, seen against the most important and momentous events of his time.
  Updated 10.25.05
• Forty Ways to Look at JFK
  Author: Rubin, Gretchen
  Publisher: Ballantine $ 24.95 ISBN: 0345450493 Date: 2005
  Kirkus
  The author of the bestselling Forty Ways to Look at Winston Churchill presents this biography-in-miniature of John F. Kennedy, highlighting crucial, oft-overlooked elements to Kennedy's story.
  Updated 10.25.05
• Ultimate Sacrifice: John and Robert Kennedy, the Plan for a Coup in Cuba, and the Murder of JFK
  Author: Waldron, Lamar
  Publisher: Carroll & Graf $ 33 ISBN: 0786714417 Date: 2005
  PW
  Building on the work of the seven governmental committees that investigated aspects of JFK's assassination, the four million documents that were declassified in the 1990s, and exclusive interviews with many Kennedy insiders, the authors are able to tell the full story of these incidents. - Publisher Marketing.
  Updated 11.21.05