JFK essay

The main direction of this work is to write a historiographical essay on the assignation of JFK. It is important to find important information in different sources and use it in the next work. First of all it is necessary to recall the most famous facts about John Fitzgerald Kennedy and then we will look through the published sources. The main fact about this famous person and talented politician we knew by heart from the school times. John Fitzgerald Kennedy was the President of the USA; moreover he takes the oath of office on January 20, 1961 and becomes the 35th President of the United States of America. At age 43, he was the youngest man and the first Roman Catholic ever elected, winning by one of the smallest margins of victory, only 115,000 popular votes. In the US history he is marked as a very talented President and also he had a very diplomatic character. Looking through information about this person I even found a internet site with his different photos and White House diary in which were noted the meeting with former President Eisenhower to discuss the Cuban situation (www.jfk.library.org/white+house+diary/1961/). This topic dedicated to his political activity and the great influence of his government is widely discussed from the times of his ruling to nowadays.  Different interesting facts became known to the wide public, but it in nor degree doesn’t reduce his historical value.

Let’s begin to analyze different sources and look how different authors show this historical person in their works. I want to take for the first my description  the work “Presidential Power from the New Deal to the New Right.” By Herbert S. Parmet. Malabar, FL: Krieger Publishing Company, 2002. This book demonstrate not only the political activity of JFK government, in it is also discussed the political decisions of different another presidents and how their decisions influenced on the future of their nation. Kennedy became a president after Eisenhower and their relations are also were enclosed to this book. I can say that it is also shows how Kennedy accepted his assignation and I want to mention that as for me it was surprisingly, that the one chapter of this book refers to the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, entitled “the Imperial Presidency,” is the weakest section of the work. Reading this book we can understand Kennedy’s relations with other good known politicians and see how his important political decisions were accepted in different power ranges.

The next source will be Mark J. White, ed.Kennedy: The New Frontier Revisited”. New York: New York University Press, 1998. This source includes the collection of essays with seven historians revisit the Presidency of John Kennedy. Book consists of eight chapters and, moreover, six of the eight chapters deal with different aspects of Kennedy’s foreign policy: Vietnam, Cuba, Berlin, the Common Market, Charles de Gaulle, and space policy. It shows that Kennedy’s assignation was really important for the improvement of foreign policy situation and he did his best in the sphere of these relations improvement. This book is value for not the only these numerically outnumber those on domestic events; they are far more solid and original. Even famous historians like this book for the profound meanings of those times events and in this attitude different historians may prefer one essay over another, but as a whole it is these foreign policy articles which give the book its true value. Yet even here, there is an overall problem. “Most of these essays focus too much on the Presidential perspective, often ignoring Congress, the opposition party, the media, and public opinion. Presidents do not operate in a vacuum, but in this book, it is rare that special interest groups or such people as Barry Goldwater, Richard Russell, or Walter Lippmann are mentioned”. We can see from this book that not only Kennedy’s assignation good revealed also the activity of other politicians are open.

The book of David M. Lubin Shooting Kennedy: JFK and the Culture of Images, 2003 is an important part of the Kennedy’s life or even it will be more correct to say the part of his awful murder. If I say that this book consists of all historical moments from the greatest president life it will be not a true. This book is not denoted to his assignation, but cultural atmosphere of that times are discussed in it. The next quoting will very exactly open the plot of the book: “In Shooting Kennedy, David Lubin speculates on the allure of these and other iconic images of the Kennedys, using them to illuminate the entire American cultural landscape. He draws from a spectacularly varied intellectual and visual terrain-neoclassical painting, Victorian poetry, modern art, Hollywood films, TV sitcoms – to show how the public came to identify personally with the Kennedys and how, in so doing, they came to understand their place in the world. This heady mix of art history, cultural history, and popular culture offers an evocative, consistently entertaining look at twentieth-century America.”

In the next paragraph I want to talk about the book “JFK And Sam: The Connection Between the Giancana And Kennedy Assassinations”. This book is not about president’s biography, but it has interesting facts about the way how he was killed, and why it was happened. This book was loved by different people and they were in awe from this book. Look through these words and all became clear for you: “Who can hear the words “grassy knoll” or “Texas School Book Depository” without a shudder of horror? Who can forget that one minute the handsome, smiling president was waving to the crowds, and the next minute his wife was bravely trying to hold his shattered head together? The story of what happened on that day is very poignant for Antoinette Giancana. Her father, Sam Giancana, ordered the assassination of President Kennedy. ” This book is about the cases of two murders and can’t had no political underlying theme.

Of course we can’t leave without our attention the next source which is also dedicated to this topic and the book of our next short review will be “Who’s Who in the JFK Assassination” by: Michael Benson, 2003, Citadel. This book shows the relations between political forces, blood and of course the “hero” of those events was money. This book looks like documentary reading, because this book is a result of many researching years and the fact of Kennedys assignation is also arise in several pages. Of course it is not the main book’s idea, and that it is in such a way we can see from the books title. I think that the best book description can give only its author and the most objective about the book content can be only a people who had read it. I want to add to this book review one emotional this book description: “Just got through reading this book. What a wealth of info. I am now going to read High Treason, which is referred to many times in the A to Z book. If you don’t walk away from this without a doubt that there was a major conspiracy, I don’t know what planet you’re from. Just when you think you know who did it, there are more and more people introduced to the theory, leaving you consumed by curiosity. What a great book. This book’s lists alphabetically the people who were involved in the assassination”.

Like a last information source I want to stop at the Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr., A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House (1965; reprint, Fawcett 1977). For my opinion this source is the best variant for the study the assignation of JFK, because the days of JFK are in normal and understandable form described in it and the most known and famous solutions of that times problems are explained. This book was initiated to show how new president of big and very powerful country began to work and what were his first steps on the new post. I specially leaved this book to the end of my books observation work. It can be look like a summarizing source, if this notion will be right on the attitude to the done work.

For the conclusion I want to say that it was rather interesting work to learn and then show different books plots. You can see that in this work were used books that at first look have no attitude to the topic “the assignation of JFK”, but every source what was mention in this work revealed this topic from different, even rather surprising sides and had its own historical value.



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