After reading the review, I might pick up the book if the Anderson Public Library stocks it. Here is the review's conclusion about the book:
An argument that offers multiple theories without having real proof for any of them is in some ways not an argument at all. Talbot has not resolved the debate over the assassination, and he has brought relatively little credible new evidence to the task of resolving it. But in fairness, that is not really his goal. Although he clearly believes deeply in the existence of a conspiracy, his purpose is to raise enough questions and doubts to inspire others to demand the truth. In doing so, he is largely preaching to the convinced. Well over half the American public (and much of the rest of the world) already shares his belief in a conspiracy without being sure what the conspiracy was. His book is evidence of why this important argument will most likely remain an argument without end.
How the review interested me in the book was its description of the book's telling of the Kennedy brothers' relationship. If we need to mourn a Kennedy, I suggest we mourn the loss of Robert and not John. Still, we have invested too much in the Kennedy mythos for rational discussion.
The reviewer uses one paragraph to kick the JFK mythos in the shin. If the usual suspects acted to stop whatever they hated about JFK, then they did not really understand JFK's policies/tactics or they grossly failed to prevent the outcomes they feared from JFK's policies.
Talbot’s interpretation of the Kennedy years is at odds even with many of the most sympathetic accounts. Kennedy did show signs in the last months of his life of reconsidering some of the premises of the cold war and of doubting the wisdom of Vietnam. But few historians would describe his presidency as a radical challenge to the status quo. Kennedy declined to escalate the Bay of Pigs invasion and the missile crisis, to be sure, but his differences with the hard-liners who opposed him were mostly tactical, not strategic. He wavered between bold, liberal visions of the future and conventional cold war thinking. His inspiring American University speech in the spring of 1963, calling for peaceful cooperation with the Soviet Union, was followed weeks later by a bellicose denunciation of Soviet power in Berlin. His private suggestions that he wanted to end the Vietnam War were accompanied by public actions that made terminating the conflict far more difficult for his successors. He and his brother were skeptical, at times even contemptuous, of the C.I.A. But as Talbot himself makes clear, that did not stop Robert Kennedy (presumably with the support of his brother) from continuing to encourage the C.I.A. to undertake covert actions to undermine Castro. John Kennedy was a smart, ambitious and capable president, with moments of greatness. If he had lived, he might well have become the heroic figure Talbot claims he was. But the reality of his foreshortened presidency was much more complex and inconsistent than Talbot acknowledges.
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