Dallas 1963
After 50 years, it’s a challenge to fashion a new lens with which to view the tragic events of Nov. 22, 1963—yet Texans Minutaglio (City On Fire) and Davis (Texas Literary Outlaws) pull it off brilliantly. The assassination in Dealey Plaza marks the end of their thrilling story, which traces three years of increasing militant extremism in Dallas, beginning even before Kennedy’s election. While many are familiar with the assault on U.N. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson in the city a month before the murder of the president, the November 1960 mob that swarmed native son and then-Senator Lyndon B. Johnson and his wife is even more disturbing. The environment of hate is chillingly evoked, centered on radical ex-general Edwin Walker and billionaire H.L. Hunt. The toxic atmosphere extended to Washington, where J.F.K.’s Medicare legislation was vehemently opposed by some. The venom makes the impending tragedy seem inevitable, and though others have made dramatic use of the prophetic statements from J.F.K. himself, Senator Hubert Humphrey, and others just before the shooting, few have employed them to better effect. —Publisher’s Weekly (Starred Review)