so-soAfter we watched Manhunt on AppleTV, I realized I didn‘t know much about Lincoln‘s assassination. I turned to O‘Reilly‘s book because of its perceived simplicity. His book reads like a thriller, as intended. But in the end, I need more details - not the glossy, easy narrative style he uses. Finally, his character flaw as conspiracy theorist in the media is on full display here as well. I‘ll need a better book to satiate my historical needs.
so-so⭐️⭐️⭐️ Read this to round out my Kennedy deep dive. It was, of course, super interesting at times, but insanely long for a book covering a six day period. I slogged through.
pickThis book makes one heck of a convincing case that the “fatal” JFK shot was the result of a secret service accidental discharge in Dealey Plaza. I checked it out because the author was a lifelong ballistics expert who spent much of his life trying to prove the Warren Commission right…only to finally determine that the evidence pointed to a horrible accident (amidst Oswald‘s attack) that was hushed up to avoid loss of institutional confidence.
pickGreat fun. I was babbling on about this at one point near 40-50% the way through like I was about Poor Things. I did not expect to like it this much.
I adore good narrative nonfiction, so picking only 3 is very difficult! So I‘m going to cheat. 😀
1. Tagged
2. “And the Band Played On”
3. “My Own Country: A Doctor‘s Story”
4. “The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl”
5. “Eleni”
@dabbe #ThreeListThursday
pickREREAD: Sarah Vowell is a Gen X historian with a Gen X wit, which is to say this book is a dark, wisecracking comedic take on U.S. history. While Vowell very much shows her personal interest in the Lincoln assassination, she also reminds us that Garfield and McKinley were assassinated as well, you know. And one of the assassins even had ties to a 19th Century biblical sex cult-turned-kitchenwares company. But we already knew that. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5
pickMy #bookedintime for the Russian revolution tells us little of the revolution but a good deal on the minutiae of the last days & weeks of the Romanov‘s. Clearly a passion project of research this is only a soft pick for me. the research sang louder than plot or character - this may be because the set up of the novel is a man in his 90s recording his memories of something that happened in his teens but the story loosing something in his voice
Rereading because Sarah Vowell is hilarious and super American history nerdy. 😂 🤣 😂
