End of Days: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy

Despite the apocalyptic title, Swanson (Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer) neither offers another conspiracy theory nor promotes any existing ones, and he does not speculate on how much better the world would have been had Kennedy lived. The author more than delivers on his promise of telling the story of the tragic events of November 22, 1963, and the surrounding days and how those closest to the event, along with the American public, grieved and tried to make sense out of the death of a young and popular president. Lee Harvey Oswald, whom the author regards as the lone assassin, and Jacqueline Kennedy, the grieving widow and orchestrator of the subsequent indelible Camelot myth, receive the most attention. Oswald, the author claims, easily had enough time to fire the three shots that killed JFK and wounded Gov. John Connally. Swanson includes compelling stories about Jacqueline Kennedy's once glamorous life turned to post-assassination sadness: incessant invasions of privacy by the press, public attacks on her remarriage to Aristotle Onassis, and her early death from lymphoma at age 64.