Book #45: Killing Kennedy: The End of Camelot by Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard

This book basically takes you through the high and low points of Kennedy's term as president and the time leading up to his assassination in Dallas. (Which is actually very interesting to read about for me now since we live in Dallas and have visited Dealey Plaza several times now to show people.) I honestly was bored out of my mind through a lot of this book. I skimmed quite a few pages because I didn't pick this book up to read about JFK's affairs or a blow-by-blow rehearsal of the Cuban Missile Crisis. I thought it was going to be a lot more about the theories behind his assassination. I am not a conspiracy theory person but I think it could be interesting to learn (in an unbiased way) what theories are out there and what evidence there is to support them. But O'Reilly specifically avoids all of that and just tells what happened on the day of the assassination, from Oswald's perspective as well as the President's. After building up to the assassination throughout the whole book--O'Reilly literally calls JFK "the man who has three months left to live" (or whatever length of time) maybe 30 times throughout the book, which was VERY melodramatic and annoying--it felt very short-lived and not worth all of the build-up he promised throughout the whole rest of the book. He really could have and should have included a lot more information about Jack Ruby and that whole shooting, and all of the other conspiracy theories out there that might explain a lot about what happened. He didn't even explain anything about the Warren Report or what the official stance on the assassination is. I don't know; it seems like there was a lot missing.

Additionally, it felt very morbid to read about his shooting in detail. I felt really uncomfortable and sad reading about it after thinking about him as a person throughout the whole book. Overall, not my favorite book I've read and I don't plan to read any others by him. It was kind of interesting reading this book so soon after finishing Upstairs at the White House and comparing the portrait of JFK and Jackie that I got from both. Both books made me feel very sorry for Jackie and not a huge fan of JFK as a person. This book especially paints him as a sex addict (which maybe he was).