Sabato reviewed by DiEugenio

[Marc Ellis]

I've always thought Sabato was a talking head with a silly mustache. He only wrote his book for a one time payoff on the fiftieth anniversary. He's not worth a serious review IMO. I did read the CTKA review though.

More importantly, I've learned much from DiEugenio's deconstruction of Bugliosi in 'Reclaiming Parkland'. At it's best, it's persuasive. And in argument, that's all that matters.

Now that I've gotten past the Hollywood stuff and the Tom Hanks tedium, I think it's a more important book than 'Destiny Betrayed'. It is focused on taking down Bugliosi's (ie., the etablishment's) conclusions, carefully, logically, one-at-a-time. That's important and no one yet has done it to my knowledge. So if Bugliosi's book is 'for the ages', so is 'Reclaiming Parkland'. It is the only serious point-by-point rebuttal I know of.

More than once, the author returns to Bugliosi's dubious pledge at the beginning of his book, to state his opponents' arguments in the way they would make them, and leave nothing out. DiEugenio shows repeatedly, either Bugliosi was dishonest about that, or the JFK assassination is a subject way out of his intellectual depth.

I highly recommend 'Reclaiming Parkland'. Notwithstanding the title, it's not about a flop movie.

Thanks Marc. I may have been the only guy to read all of the book, plus the CD. When I asked Gary Aguilar if he had done so, he memorably replied, "Are you crazy!"

To this day, I don't understand why Bugliosi took that pledge in his introduction. If I was his editor I would have told him, "Look you wrote a long prosecutor's brief. You did not include all the exculpatory stuff. Someone is going to take notice and go after you on that." Either the editor did not tell him that, or Vince ignored him. With all due respect to VInce, who I still like personally, he deliberately left stuff out. For example, about Ruby's polygraph. He read that report. He then censored it for the reader.

About the title. They gave me a list of five titles to pick from. I wanted to call it either "Refuting Bugliosi" or "Doubting Bugliosi". I got overruled. Turns out I was right. But 90% of the time, the publisher gets to name the title.

I think your publishers didn't foresee the possibility the movie would be a miserable flop that never came close to making a dent on the public consciousness. So the title today alas, is something of a non sequitur.

I think it's your most important book. As long as people refer to Bugliosi's tome 'for the ages', scholars will have to refer to your book as well. It's the only one out there. And it's a very careful and logical deconstruction of Bugliosi.

it's not for the first time reader. But everyone in the research community should have a copy. To rebut Bugliosi - it is the best source out there. Maybe you can retitle it in the next edition.

[Tracy Riddle]

Now, if anyone thinks that Frazier was going to say he saw LHO on the steps, well, forget it.

We don't know what he may have told them originally. From a 2008 Aynesworth article on Frazier: "After 12 intense hours at the Police Department, he was allowed to take a polygraph test, passed it impressively and was released." When you're nineteen years old, and the police work on you for 12 hours, you'd probably tell them that Oswald started the Chicago fire.

[Tracy Riddle]

This last year or two has reminded me of the period during the Garrison investigation when they rushed out numerous titles to try and get public opinion back on track:

Lewis, Richard Warren and Lawrence Schiller - The Scavengers and Critics of the Warren Report: The Endless Paradox - 1967
Manchester, William - The Death of a President - 1967
James, Rosemary and Jack Wardlaw - Plot or Politics?: The Garrison Case and its Cast - 1967
Oswald, Robert with Myrick and Barbara Land - Lee: A Portrait of Lee Harvey Oswald by His Brother - 1967
Roberts, Charles - The Truth About the Assassination - 1967
Wills, Garry and Ovid Demaris - Jack Ruby: The Man Who Killed the Man who Killed Kennedy - 1967
Bishop, Jim - The Day Kennedy Was Shot - 1968
Gertz, Elmer - Moment of Madness: The People vs Jack Ruby - 1968
Morin, Relman - Assassination: The Death of President John F Kennedy - 1968
Brener, Milton E. - The Garrison Case: A Study in the Abuse of Power - 1969
Bringuier, Carlos - Red Friday: Nov. 22, 1963 - 1969
Hanson, William H. - The Shooting of John F Kennedy: One Assassin, Three Shots, Three Hits, No Misses - 1969
Kirkwood, James - American Grotesque: An Account of the Clay Shaw-Jim Garrison Affair in New Orleans - 1970

[Jim DiEugenio]

Boy Aynesworth is a hoot isn't he?

In Bishop's book he says that Frazier was so emotionally distraught that the polygraph could not even get a reading.

Marc:

I agree, no one could have foreseen just how big a bomb the movie was going to be.

As per being my best, or most important book, I like to think that Destiny Betrayed, Second Edition, and Reclaiming Parkland are nice complements to each other.

[Albert Doyle]

I'm not in love with the public. When a book like Destiny Betrayed comes along they ignore it. When overpriced toilet paper like Killing Kennedy appears they buy it up in droves.


I think Reclaiming Parkland is symbolic of the evidence at Parkland Hospital, so even if the movie was a deserved flop it still has meaning.


Aynesworth should be jailed as a Quisling to democracy.

[Jim DiEugenio]

This last year or two has reminded me of the period during the Garrison investigation when they rushed out numerous titles to try and get public opinion back on track:

Lewis, Richard Warren and Lawrence Schiller - The Scavengers and Critics of the Warren Report: The Endless Paradox - 1967
Manchester, William - The Death of a President - 1967
James, Rosemary and Jack Wardlaw - Plot or Politics?: The Garrison Case and its Cast - 1967
Oswald, Robert with Myrick and Barbara Land - Lee: A Portrait of Lee Harvey Oswald by His Brother - 1967
Roberts, Charles - The Truth About the Assassination - 1967
Wills, Garry and Ovid Demaris - Jack Ruby: The Man Who Killed the Man who Killed Kennedy - 1967
Bishop, Jim - The Day Kennedy Was Shot - 1968
Gertz, Elmer - Moment of Madness: The People vs Jack Ruby - 1968
Morin, Relman - Assassination: The Death of President John F Kennedy - 1968
Brener, Milton E. - The Garrison Case: A Study in the Abuse of Power - 1969
Bringuier, Carlos - Red Friday: Nov. 22, 1963 - 1969
Hanson, William H. - The Shooting of John F Kennedy: One Assassin, Three Shots, Three Hits, No Misses - 1969
Kirkwood, James - American Grotesque: An Account of the Clay Shaw-Jim Garrison Affair in New Orleans - 1970

That is some list there. A couple of which I never heard of, like the Morin and the Hanson books.

If you throw in the CBS special advised by McCLoy and the NBC special advised on by CIA and partly financed by them, I mean, they were clearly gunning for JG.

[Tracy Riddle]

Morin was an AP correspondent and a personal friend of JFK's (he claims; probably was, since many people in the media ironically liked Kennedy when he was alive). I read his book years ago and took notes. It's one of those instant books that is short on facts and long on hyperbole.

He described Oswald as "deranged, but he had a certain psychotic cunning." He attacked the European media, "where the belief that the President had been the victim of a conspiracy already was unshakably fixed. Convinced of this from the start, European newsmen had been busy digging up half-truths and fragments of facts, building hypotheses on other hypotheses to lend credence to the conspiracy theory. Europeans, unaccustomed to apolitical assassination, simply could never accept the proposition that all three Dallas murders were the product of two deranged minds and a set of almost unbelievable improbabilities."

See? It's those crazy Europeans. They can never see how right we Americans are about everything.

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

Jim or someone...

Can you PLEASE put this review on Amazon. There are still something like 47 5 star reviews compared to 5 one stars on there.

It really does make a dif, I can tell.

They do allow for pretty long reviews so if you just post the first two thirds and then type where to go for the rest of the review that should work. There is, IMO no need to write anything more.

Thanks. It really matters.

Since the links dont work you could just type

go to CTKA name of article and date of article and then they can search engine that.

[Tracy Riddle]

Nathaniel, you have to realize that a lot of the 5 star reviews on political books are fake reviews put there by friends/employees or using fake accounts, and there's not much you can do to overcome that.

And a lot of the "top seller" right-wing political books are bought by right-wing institutions and rich people in huge quantities to push them up the best seller list. Then they quickly turn up in used book stores. I see them all the time - vast quantities of O'Reilly, Coulter, Beck or whoever. You can tell they were never even read.

It's all a big marketing campaign, and there's little we can do about it. Image trumps reality every day in America.

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

Thanks a lot Jim for everything you have done re this horrible Sabato book.

I think the Sabato book wins out over Shanon for the nobel prize in Insidious Intent.

Can EVERYONE PLEASE GO AND HIT THE LIKE BUTTON FOR THIS REVIEW. THAT WILL INTRODUCE MANY NEW READERS TO THE ENTIRE CTKA SITE. http://www.amazon.com/Kennedy-Half-Centu...lf+century

Tracy, I agree it is rigged, but still sometimes an opportunity can make a big difference. Jims intro to his Shenon book review MADE FRONT PAGE, BECAUSE IT GOT A LOT OF LIKES, AND HAD AN IMMEDIATE AND VISIBLE IMPACT ON SALES OF THAT HORRIBLE BOOK. Yes, it was eventually zapped of first page, but the effect was noticeable and huge, as far as sales went when it was page 1.

Lets make sure LOTS OF PEOPLE SEE THE SABATO REVIEW BECAUSE THIS WAS THE MOST MSM PIMPED BOOK OUT THERE. Some deep marketing scheming went into that one, what with the whole fake online course, and the using of the Julian Bond-blade etc. Now stop a minute. How much greater the impact when LOTS of people see an informed critical review of it? The line from Inherit The Wind comes to mind when the religious defense lawyer says "if they had sent a mouse instead of a dragon to defend [the science teacher.....]

By the way Jim I was shocked today when I saw your book in the window of St Marks Books in NYC. Normally that bookstore has really stood out as a kind of crunchy, UberChomsky Store that does anything possible to not have any good books on JFK. Was surprised and went in and bought a copy to reward their turn-around even though I already owned the kindle. Then I had a long talk with the guy at the counter about how bad Chomsky was on JFK and the early history of the national security state. The strategic location of this dude, made it worthwhile IMO. By any means necessary, if we are "at war"