Four Days in November: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy [Paperback]

Vincent Bugliosi (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 17, 2008

“As good a second-by-second reconstruction of the assassination and its aftermath as I’ve read.”—Bryan Burrough, New York Times

Four Days in November is an extraordinarily exciting, precise, and definitive narrative of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, by Lee Harvey Oswald. It is drawn from Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, a huge and historic account of the event and all the conspiracy theories it spawned, by Vincent Bugliosi, famed prosecutor of Charles Manson and author of Helter Skelter. For general readers, the carefully documented account presented in Four Days is utterly persuasive: Oswald did it and he acted alone.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"One of the best narrative treatments of the four days... One cannot help admiring [Bugliosi's] zeal, drive, and conscientiousness." Wall Street Journal"

About the Author

Vincent Bugliosi, prosecutor of Charles Manson and author of Helter Skelter, Outrage, and other #1 best-selling books, lives in Los Angeles, California.

Product Details

• Paperback: 688 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1st Ed. edition (May 17, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393332152
• ISBN-13: 978-0393332155
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (36 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #188,923 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #54 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > People, A-Z > ( K ) > Kennedy, John F.

More About the Author

Vincent Bugliosi, prosecutor of Charles Manson, lives in Los Angeles, California. He is the author or co-author of many books, among them the #1 best-sellers Helter Skelter, And the Sea Will Tell, and Outrage; plus Four Days in November, The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder, No Island of Sanity, The Betrayal of America, Lullaby and Good Night, Shadow Of Cain, Till Death Us Do Part, Drugs in America, and The Phoenix Solution.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars No Photo Section in Kindle Edition?, June 22, 2010

By 

Beth (St. Mary's County, MD USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Four Days in November: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy (Kindle Edition)

Enjoyed the book very much, especially pleased with Mr. Bugliosi's writing style. I was a little surprised, though, to find that the entire photo section was omitted from my Kindle edition. It was a little frustrating to read a book that contains many references to photos and diagrams in a section that wasn't there. I called customer service and was told that perhaps the publisher wanted the photo section left out. He apologized and refunded my money.

53 of 77 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Some day you'll hang your heads in shame...My son [may be] the unsung hero of this episode."--Marguerite, Oswald's mother, June 9, 2008

By 

Mary Whipple (New England) - See all my reviews
(COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Four Days in November: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy (Paperback)

When Vincent Bugliosi wrote Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, published in May, 2007, the predecessor of the book being reviewed here, it was widely regarded as his magnum opus, a towering masterpiece which took twenty years and 1648 pages to write. In this new edition about the assassination, drawn from Reclaiming History, Bugliosi has now winnowed the original manuscript to approximately 500 pages, concentrating on the facts of the assassination and eliminating nearly all the material used by the conspiracy theorists because he has essentially disproved the conspiracy idea.

Four Days in November reconstructs the assassination, giving dates and times, sometimes second by second, to make these real events come to life, and he includes seventy-nine photographs and drawings. The resulting achievement is stunning, an intensely readable and compelling work of scholarship which should eliminate, once and for all, the idea that there was more than one gunman. Photographs of the shooting, broken down into tiny fractions of a second, anatomical drawings of the wounds of President Kennedy and Governor Connolly, fingerprint evidence in the "sniper's nest" at the Book Depository, extensive photographs of the grassy knoll at the time of the shooting, and accounts from many eye-witnesses provide weighty, seemingly incontrovertible, evidence that Oswald was the lone shooter.

Bugliosi, who prosecuted Charles Manson in the Tate-LaBianca trial and then went on to write Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders about that trial, is an accomplished writer who shares with the reader the kinds of details that he, as a prosecutor, counts as compelling evidence. At the same time, he is a painstaking recreator of scenes and observer of human nature. His intuitive sense of how people behave gives him an understanding of their psychology and, at times, motivations, all of which humanize this account of seemingly inhuman actions. Focusing on Lee Harvey Oswald and his dysfunctional family, the Dallas police and press, Jack Ruby and the underworld which he represents in Dallas, and the Kennedy family as it comes to grips not only with the loss of the President but with the loss of a loved one, Bugliosi provides an intimate and unforgettable look at a national tragedy which, in his hands, is also transformed into a moving series of personal tragedies.

Readers who begin this book will be as compelled to keep reading, as details unfold, as were all of us who lived through these events during that terrible long weekend in November, 1963, when we remained glued to our TV sets around the clock, and the entire country shut down. Bugliosi's total dedication to providing every relevant detail, his ability to convey the atmosphere and the understandable confusion following the shooting, his sensitivity to the feelings of the innocent people and families who were permanently scarred by these events, and his honesty in recreating events without trying to make the facts "fit" an agenda, make this book a milestone of historical research, endowing these terrible events with the respect--and finality--they deserve. n Mary Whipple

Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery
The Death of a President November 20-November 25 1963
The Warren Commission Report: Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy

10 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Evidence and Facts Debunks Conspiracy Theories, April 24, 2011

By 

kone "kone" (USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 50 REVIEWER)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Four Days in November: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy (Paperback)

Infamous trial lawyer, Vincent Bugliosi, (of Helter Skelter/Charles Manson fame) breaks down the most important "Four Days in November", (November 22 - 25), day by day, often minute by minute, and shows definitively how the evidence collected by the police, the FBI, and Secret Service, builds an airtight case against the lone assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. Reminicient of Gerald Posner's seminal work, "Case Closed", Case Closed, Bugliosi takes a slightly different track in showing how the evidence builds day by day in chronological order. (Both books are in my opinion the most logically compelling legal volumes on the assassination).

One cannot solve a murder mystery without hard physical evidence. And in this case, there is a literal mountain of evidence, and it is overwhelming and absolutely conclusive that Lee Oswald was the lone assassin of President Kennedy. Conspiracy theorists like to focus on their own particular perceived inconsistencies in the evidence to "prove" their own pet theories of conspiracy. However, the major fault of conspiracy theorists is that they singularly focus on relatively minor inconsistencies in the evidence, and fail to take in the whole grand scope of evidence which pieced together logically, (as Bugliosi meticulously does) definitively proves that Oswald fired the shots that killed Kennedy and injured Governor Connally. Much to the utter dismay of conspiracy theorists, Bugliosi builds a case against Oswald that cannot be broken.

Specifically damning is the following evidence: several eyewitnesses who saw Lee H. Oswald (or at least saw the gun in the window) fire upon the motorcade from the SE corner window of the Texas School Book Depository (TSBD), three expended shell casings below the SE corner window that match Oswald's Italian-made WW II vintage rifle, the paper wrapping found at the SE corner window of the TSBD that one eyewitness saw LHO carry into the TSBD that morning claiming he had "curtain rods", Oswald's fingerprints on the weapon, Oswald's signature for the purchase of the mail-order rifle and the handgun (which killed Officer J. D. Tippit in Oswald's fleeing from the scene of the crime), multiple eyewitnesses that saw Oswald murder Tippit, ballistic evidence that prooves without any doubt that the bullets fired from the handgun are those that killed Tippit, and finally, the evidence (visual and incidental) which places Oswald on the sixth floor of the TSBD on the date and time of the assassination, and also pins Oswald to the scene of the shooting murder of J. D Tippit.

Conspiracy theorists, who have written extensively on the Kennedy Assassination, have convinced nearly 2/3rds of the American public that Oswald could not be the killer (many conspiracy books absolutely exhonorate Oswald). They base their various theories (virtually none of them are in agreement with each other), on vague theories which cannot be definitively proven, especially in light of the evidence. Their most important work was to place into doubt the "Magic Bullet Theory", which they say could not have caused the wound to Kennedy's neck and all the wounds to Gov. Connally. The American public ate this up and sided with the conspiracists. Unfortunately for the conspiracists, but fortunately for justice and truth, the Magic Bullet Theory was not "magic" at all, and subsequent frame by frame (computer) analysis of the Abraham Zapruder film, combined with the autopsy facts definitively prove that the shots had to have come only from the TSBD, and the second shot (the so-called "magic bullet")caused the wounds to Kennedy's neck and Gov. Connally. Buffaloed for years by conspiracy theorists, the American public now can see the clear case against the true assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. No murder case is prosecuted from innuendo and wild imaginings that have no basis in truth; no, rather, a murder is solved by the application of the available evidence, and in this regard, Bugliosi makes his convincing case that only Oswald fired the shots that killed our youthful President and also killed Officer Tippit. To consider Oswald a "patsy", a set-up for a greater conspiracy, is not only a great miscarriage of justice, but further dishonors those killed, and those who were forever traumatized by the cold-blooded murders.

There are several good books on the Kennedy assassination, and many books, far too many to mention by name, that are a complete sensationalist waste of time. This book by Vincent Bugliosi is a fondational cornerstone in the case against Oswald. Please read the book, consider the evidence carefully, and then come to your own conclusion. Don't let others wild imaginings (especially Oliver Stone's ridiculous "JFK" movie) decide for you the most important political murder of the 20th century. The case has been definitively solved. It is unfortunate that the American public has been misled for decades by conspiracy theorists who turn the obviously guilty into innocent. Thank you Mr. Bugliosi for presenting the evidence to the American public in such a clear fashion.

konedog