BOOK REVIEW

United States Sen. John F. Kennedy speaks to a crowd in Dallas in 1960 while campaigning for president.

‘Dallas 1963’ delves into how fear took root in city Another look at JFK's assassination

Review By Brett Campbell Art submitted

This year marks 57 years since he was killed, but millions are still interested — some obsessed — with the life, death, facts and mythology surrounding John F. Kennedy.

A quick search for his name online provides more than 2.47 million results. But a search for “Who killed John F. Kennedy?” brings more than 16.1 million hits.

No matter what answer you personally believe, the authors of the non-fiction work “Dallas 1963” consider the impact of a player not typically discussed — not Oswald, not the CIA, not LBJ, not an unknown sniper — but the Texas city itself in which Kennedy was slain. More specifically, the persons and atmosphere in a city unlike any other in the United States or the world at that time.

Authors Bill Minutaglio and Steven L. Davis explain:

“Dallas 1963 is not meant to address the many conspiracy theories surrounding the murder of President Kennedy. Our aim is to introduce and then connect the outsize characters and the singular climate in a city that many blamed for killing a president.”

Each of the book’s chapters is a month in history, beginning with January 1960 it continues through April, skips to July, then September through November. The following year of 1961 omits only the months of May and August; 1962 skips only August; and the fateful year of 1963 covers each month up until the final chapter — “November 22.”

Built on years of research informed by access to thousands of documents, oral histories, police records, eyewitness accounts, dissertations, government files, unreleased photographs and film footage, the book was also submitted to review by several independent readers who worked to “detect and erase unintended suggestions of political bias.”

“In the end, Dallas 1963 is an exploration of how fear and unease can take root, how suspicions can emerge in a seemingly orderly universe,” the authors wrote. “How no one — including a doomed president — could have understood the full measure of the swirling forces at work in a place called Dallas.”

The prelude begins to set the stage for the book’s narrative with the incredulity of the Soviet Union’s Nikita Khrushchev over the fact that he won’t be allowed to visit Disneyland on his trip to the U.S. — security cannot guarantee his safety.

The story then moves to Dallas businessmen and the influential newspaper The Dallas Morning News shaping men’s thoughts over the presidential campaigns of Kennedy and Richard Nixon, as nearly simultaneously a young ex-Marine by the name of Lee Harvey Oswald is welcomed into Russia

Photo by Dennis Darling

From left, co-authors Steven L. Davis and Bill Minutaglio built their book on years of research to create a narrative of the atmosphere of a city they believe contributed to the death of JFK.

as a citizen.

Several states and cities in the South, including Dallas, are “still brazenly defying the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board decision, refusing federal orders to integrate schools.’”

The world in Dallas is at unrest and tensions are brewing to a certain boiling point. Central characters display in their own actions and words, and those of others, their extreme biases, racism, agendas against Catholicism or Protestantism, regarding Communism and capitalism, fear of the unknown and misunderstood, and an outright refusal to change anything about their own lives and circumstances.

The book is not a novelization, but reads as well as any novel. it’s a page turner, full of seemingly unconnected events revealed as linked in the minds of Americans in the early 1960s. Minutaglio and Davis do an excellent job in helping the reader understand what it may have been like to be in the room with key characters at key moments, connecting the dots as one more than half a century into the future can attempt to do.

With the aid of several black and white photos and several pages of source material lists, the reader can link an image to a player in history and have opportunity to follow up with their own research into virtually any of the material presented. The post credits provide brief summaries of what happened next in the lives of several of the “main players” in this historical account.

No one who is bored with history or mystery should bother with this book that clocks in at 336 pages in hardcover, prior to appendices. But for those who are intrigued, even enough to pick up the book or to read this far into a review of it, they will not be disappointed.

In addition to their other non-fiction books and multiple publishing credits in periodicals and journals, the authors are a Texas State University curator (Davis) and a University of Texas at Austin professor (Minutaglio). Minutaglio is also a former employee of The Dallas Morning News.

The book is available at dallas1963book.com and other major book retailers.