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Customer Review
- Reviewed in the United States on October 21, 2021This book was a real slog in that it's very long and incredibly detailed. Another reason was that, for me, it brought back into my mind the names and places of events from my early life: I was a teenager when Kennedy was killed and could take you to the very spot where I heard the news, even now, nearly sixty years later. As I plowed through it and the innumerable detailed footnotes, I grew angrier and angrier at the people who cannot, even to this day, let go of their fantasies.
Posner demolishes the "arguments" put forward by the conspiracy theorists, but nothing--NOTHING--will convince them. To people who believe there MUST have been a conspiracy the very absence of any evidence for one is proof positive that the conspiracy exists. The fact is that people want to believe that it's impossible for one lone lunatic to change the course of history, but that is exactly what Oswald did with his $12 rifle and his seething anger.
Oswald acted alone, period. He wasn't a patsy, he wasn't a pawn, he wasn't a fall guy: he was a paranoid screwball with a grudge and a golden opportunity. Jack Ruby was a loser with a revolver and a distorted view of his own worth to society. He killed Oswald out of sheer grief and madness, not because he was somehow assigned the job by shadowy figures in The Mob, the CIA, the FBI, the NSA, take your pick. Oswald was a nut, Ruby was very nearly as much of a nut as Oswald.
Posner proves this beyond question, using the silly arguments of the conspiracy theorists against them. It is a great work, and most definitely closes the case. Anyone who can't accept the truth about the assassination is simply beyond convincing, willfully blind, and will no doubt denounce this book as some sort of additional "proof" of the conspiracy they have to believe existed and still exists--and that Posner is covering for them. Sad, very sad.
This is a great book, and people who read it with an open mind and an understanding of human nature will benefit from doing so. Those who can't think beyond the fallacies expounded by the conspiracy theorists won't and can't.
