Strange that this book is still in print while Bishop's other book about the murder of a President, "The Day Kennedy Was Shot," is out of print. That book similiarly examines the day Kennedy died as this one examines the day Lincoln died, and both are stellar examples of the researcher's craft and the storyteller's art. Oddly, another book which minutely examines the day of Kennedy's murder, William Manchester's "Death Of A President," is ALSO out of print. Conspiracy? At this point, who knows? Who even cares anymore?
JFK asked Bishop to write an article about him on the basis of having read this book about Lincoln; the original article was titled "A Day In The Life of a President." Kennedy suggested Bishop expand the article into a full book, which Bishop was in the process of doing when JFK was killed, and so the book turned into a sequel of sorts to this one about Lincoln that the murdered President loved. In the words of William Shatner, "Irony can be pretty ironic sometimes."
I have no idea why the Kennedy book is no longer in print. The Lincoln book is still out there, but "The Day Kennedy Was Shot" has apparently fallen out of favor. Strange.
So why a minute-by-minute examination of a single day, even a day as momentous as this one? That's not necessarily an easy question to answer; it is a kind of subset history genre, the close examination of Kennedy's death, or Lincoln's, or Christ's, or 9/11, or D-Day, or Hiroshima, etc. On first blush it might seem of value only to the researcher writing from a larger historical perspective, but in fact a work of history with this kind of focus can be far more interesting than any other approach to the subject. In the case of JFK, for instance, the incredible tension that builds naturally from a chronicle of the day he was killed makes for a more thrilling story than a novel on the same subject could ever hope to achieve.
The book follows not only Kennedy but all the players, Jackie, Oswald, his mother & his wife, LBJ, RFK, J.D. Tippett, and so on. At times these separate strands converge, but mostly they're followed separately and Bishop does a masterful job of keeping all the threads tight. It's hard to imagine the amount of research and organization that went into telling this story so cleanly, because it is certainly one of the most confusing, contradictory days in world history, but Bishop makes it look easy. He is a brilliant storyteller, and anyone will tell you that is what a great reporter has to be. It's not just the facts, ma'am, it's the narrative drive, and this one moves like a supercharged Hummer.
So why has it fallen out of print? And why has another book on the same topic, William Manchester's "Death of a President," also fallen out of print? I'm not much on conspiracy theories; there's nothing in either book that the "military-industrial complex" would find terribly distressing. Bishop does mention several eyewitnesses who saw or heard shots coming from the famous grassy knoll---as, incidentally, do the live news accounts of November 22---but by far most of the evidence Bishop (and Manchester) collects points squarely at Lee Harvey Oswald. I think this excellent book is out of print now because people just don't care who killed Kennedy anymore, and they certainly aren't interested in a blow-by-blow account of the assassination.
To say this is "too bad" would be an understatement of biblical proportions. Every day, every hour, we are losing our sense of wonder and curiosity about our world, and we are most particularly forgetting the lessons the Sixties taught us: don't trust the official story. They may be right (in this case, I think they actually are: I believe Oswald did act alone and the "coverup" all these years has been the CIA, FBI, Dallas police dept., etc. covering up how incompetent and ineffectual they were protecting Kennedy that day), but you should ALWAYS look into the story for yourself. Books like "The Day Kennedy Was Shot" (and Oliver Stone's masterwork film "JFK") help us do that, by marshalling all the available information into a powerful narrative thrust. If we forget, or more importantly if we simply cease to care, then the ones who want us to sleep our lives away have won before we're even out of the starting gate.
Read this book, not just because it is about one of the most important days in American history, and not just because it is a remarkably well-written thriller, but also because it is important, SO important, that we never forget this man and how he died and the lessons his death taught us.
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