Dallas 1963

Bill Minutaglio · Steven L. Davis

Oct 2013 · Hachette Audio · Narrated by Bill Minutaglio, Steven L. Davis, and Tony Messano

About this audiobook

In the months and weeks before the fateful November 22nd, 1963, Dallas was brewing with political passions, a city crammed with larger-than-life characters dead-set against the Kennedy presidency. These included rabid warriors like defrocked military general Edwin A. Walker; the world's richest oil baron, H. L. Hunt; the leader of the largest Baptist congregation in the world, W.A. Criswell; and the media mogul Ted Dealey, who raucously confronted JFK and whose family name adorns the plaza where the president was murdered. On the same stage was a compelling cast of marauding gangsters, swashbuckling politicos, unsung civil rights heroes, and a stylish millionaire anxious to save his doomed city.

Bill Minutaglio and Steven L. Davis ingeniously explore the swirling forces that led many people to warn President Kennedy to avoid Dallas on his fateful trip to Texas. Breathtakingly paced, Dallas 1963 presents a clear, cinematic, and revelatory look at the shocking tragedy that transformed America. Countless authors have attempted to explain the assassination, but no one has ever bothered to explain Dallas-until now.

With spellbinding storytelling, Minutaglio and Davis lead us through intimate glimpses of the Kennedy family and the machinations of the Kennedy White House, to the obsessed men in Dallas who concocted the climate of hatred that led many to blame the city for the president's death. Here at long last is an accurate understanding of what happened in the weeks and months leading to John F. Kennedy's assassination. Dallas 1963 is not only a fresh look at a momentous national tragedy but a sobering reminder of how radical, polarizing ideologies can poison a city-and a nation.

Winner of the PEN Center USA Literary Award for Research Nonfiction
Named one of the Top 3 JFK Books by Parade Magazine.
Named 1 of The 5 Essential Kennedy assassination books ever written by The Daily Beast.
Named one of the Top Nonfiction Books of 2013 by Kirkus Reviews.

Ratings and reviews

This audiobook provides the most detail of any I've come across regarding the right wing extremism existing in Dallas and the south in the early 1960s. I'm not exactly a researcher, but have dabbled into many historical works around the assassinations of the 60s. Although the title suggests it, the book does not cover much of the assassination itself. Rather, the majority of it covers the antics of Gen. Walker at the time. I do find it ironic, however, that all this right wing angst towards JFK existed in Dallas, in part towards his left-leaning ideals, that his assassin would also be a left-leaning communist with no clear motive in a city where many key people had the motives and the resources to do it. I'm not sure what the author's thesis was for this, or his motivation or inspiration for it. But I think its a bit short-sighted on the Oswald-Ruby aspect of the story. Nevertheless, it is an informative and LENGTHY audiobook.

About the author

Bill Minutaglio is the author of several books, including Dallas 1963, for which he won the PEN Center USA Literary Award for Research Nonfiction with Steven L. Davis. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Newsweek, and Esquire.

Steven L. Davis is the PEN USA-award winning author of four books focusing on iconoclasts, including Dallas 1963 with Bill Minutaglio and J. Frank Dobie: A Liberated Mind. He is the president of the Texas Institute of Letters and a curator at the Wittliff Collections at Texas State University in San Marcos.