The Kennedy Detail provides new insight into the over-reported subject of President John F. Kennedyís assassination. This is important because of the source of the information in The Kennedy Detail: the agents who were sworn to protect and serve the president have finally allowed their stories to be told.
Fortunately, it was part of their jobs to maintain meticulous records of everything from the mundane to the horrific. The surviving agents combed through their records to give the authors access to reports written right after the assassination.
The picture that emerges from The Kennedy Detail is one guaranteed to make you teary-eyed. The agonizing descriptions of the facial expressions of agents such as Clint Hill will have you feeling his anguish. Hill is the agent who was photographed clinging to the back of the presidentís car. He got there a split second too late to save the President, but he was in time to save the First Lady from falling off the car. She was scrambling over the back of the car trying to retrieve pieces of the Presidentís brain so she could put them back in place. Re-read that last line. Thatís how gut-wrenching reading this book is.
The iconic photo of Mrs. Kennedy and Caroline kneeling at the presidentís casket gains even greater poignancy after reading The Kennedy Detail because of what John Junior asked one of the agents just as that picture was snapped.
As painful as many of the anecdotes are, there are also stories that will make you smile. After President Kennedy was elected, the agents rushed to Florida to protect him so quickly that they were sweltering in the heat while wearing wool suits - so the president-elect gave them each a short-sleeved shirt to spare them further misery.
The Kennedy Detail is a brilliant addition to the long-saturated Kennedy Assassination book market, providing a much-needed break for reality and away from the speculative and downright books of lies that have been published.