16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
I Felt Like I Was Living Through This Again, November 3, 2003
This review is from: President Kennedy Has Been Shot (Hardcover)
Both newspaper reporters and television newscasters provide the reader with a review of the unforgettable four days in 1963 that jolted America. The book provides a nice mixture of photographs that are embedded into the consciousness of those who lived through this tragedy in addition to a text of newspaper and television reporters who were directly involved in informing the public. I, like other readers, found the book hard to put down, and went through the book in two sessions. Throughout the book it is mentioned how easy it was for reporters to gain access to places in 1963 that increased security would deny them nowadays. Memories will come flooding back to you if you lived through this period of American history. If you were too young to remember, or if you weren't alive at the time, this book, through text of those who reported the event, and the photographs will bring you back to the way it was. A CD accompanies the book narrated by Dan Rather to add to its reality. I would highly recommend this book to you.
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17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Incredibly COMPELLING: puts you THERE, December 4, 2003
This review is from: President Kennedy Has Been Shot (Hardcover)
There has never been and may never be a book like this one. President Kennedy Has Been Shot combines the best of "oral history" (long-quotes from people who were there rather than a long newsmagazine-style narrative account) plus a pull-out-all-stops CD...that puts you BACK in 1963, even if you weren't born yet.
Where was I? I had just finished a (terrible) speech to run (unsuccessfully) for jr high school vice president. I was self-absorbed after my first-ever serious public speech. Right after I spoke a teacher got up and said something, there was a gasp and people filed out to the buses (it was time to go). I asked a teacher what happened and he said the title of this book: "President Kennedy has been shot..."
It doesn't matter if you lived through this time or not. The highly-detailed reminiscences plus excerpts from things said at time time -- coupled with the effective use in the book of text of key audio-news tracks on the incredible CD -- make this highly compelling. And you're shoved into 1963, whether you were alive then or not, when you hear the CD's radio and television news bulletins, the shooting of Oswald -- but especially the loud, shocked GASP from the crowd when the Boston Symphony's conductor tells the crowd that the President was assasinated. And then you hear the mournful gasp as he says he will play a funeral march...
It's all there in the text and the CD. Including things you didn't know at the time: authentic audio of Lady Bird Johnson's dramatic diary dictations, tapes of private phone calls by Johnson to J Edgar Hoover, Rose Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr, and a slew of news correspondents trying to cover a story. In the text you see how they covered it; in the CD you hear how some of them emotionally lost it.
This is THE amazingly-priced multimedia packet to get anyone who wants to learn more, recall, or learn for the first time about what happened on that awful Nov. 22, 1963 and on those wrenching days after it. The CD is worth the price of the book and CD; the book is worth the price of the book and CD.
I was reluctant to buy this at first. I thought it'd be seriously deficient and not do justice to the man or the tragedy. I was wrong on all counts.
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
I couldn't put this book down!, October 30, 2003
This review is from: President Kennedy Has Been Shot (Hardcover)
Gripping. Get prepared to be completely transported back to 1963. It is fascinating to re-live the events surrounding JFK's assassination through all the journalists and reporters who had unbelievable access to everyone involved. I couldn't put the book down!
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