The best books about JFK (John F. Kennedy)

Case Closed is the definitive reexamination of the JFK assassination. Published in 1993, on the 30th anniversary of America’s most infamous political murder, it was a New York Times bestseller and a finalist for the Pulitzer in History. I testified before Congress about the findings of my book: that Lee Harvey Oswald had, indeed, acted alone in killing JFK. 

Historian Stephen Ambrose said about Case Closed: “Posner has done a great service, in the process proving that a single researcher, working alone, is always preferable to a committee. This is a model of historical research. It should be required reading for anyone reviewing any book on the Kennedy assassination. Beyond the outstanding job of research, Posner is a dramatic storyteller. The recreation of Oswald's, and Jack Ruby's, personalities are wonderfully well done. This case has been closed by Mr. Posner's work.”

Historians place the assassination of John F. Kennedy among the biggest watershed events of the 20th century. Since that 1963 tragedy, more than 2,000 books have covered various aspects of the assassination and its aftermath. Some have even claimed to solve the case. Veteran journalist Kevin James Shay focuses on presenting what occurred between Kennedy's 1960 presidential triumph and his assassination in an objective manner. The narrative, infused with behind-the-scenes details that have been brought to light in recent years, provides a compelling account that is particularly geared towards the average reader.

The book unearths some fresh details, such as about other attempts on Kennedy's life and the involvement of a Ku Klux Klan leader who opposed racial violence to the point that he became a government informant and likely helped prolong Kennedy’s life.

Historians place the assassination of John F. Kennedy among the biggest watershed events of the 20th century. Since that 1963 tragedy, more than 2,000 books have covered various aspects of the assassination and its aftermath. Some have even claimed to solve the case. Veteran journalist Kevin James Shay focuses on presenting what occurred between Kennedy's 1960 presidential triumph and his assassination in an objective manner. The narrative, infused with behind-the-scenes details that have been brought to light in recent years, provides a compelling account that is particularly geared towards the average reader.

The book unearths some fresh details, such as about other attempts on Kennedy's life and the involvement of a Ku Klux Klan leader who opposed racial violence to the point that he became a government informant and likely helped prolong Kennedy’s life.

In the mid-1960s, the FBI was secretly involved with three charismatic figures: the ambitious neophyte politician Ronald Reagan, the fierce but fragile radical Mario Savio, and the liberal university president Clark Kerr. Subversives traces these converging narratives in a dramatic and disturbing story of FBI surveillance, illegal break-ins, infiltration, planted news stories, poison-pen letters, and secret detention lists, all centered on the Free Speech Movement at the University of California’s Berkeley campus.

Subversives provides a fresh look at the legacy of the sixties, sheds new light on one of America’s most popular presidents, and tells a cautionary tale about the dangers of secrecy and unchecked power.

When I was a student, around 1970, Paul Samuelson dominated economics. He was well known as the author of the textbook that, in 1948, changed the way introductory economics was taught. He had written articles perceived to be foundational to almost every field of economics: the theory of individual behavior, the provision of public goods, international trade, financial markets, the determination of employment and output, and much else. And yet there was a puzzle: how could a highly technical, mathematical economist have come to write a book that was as non-mathematical as Economics: An Introductory Analysis and which was so popular that millions of copies were sold?

My book, which is the first half of a full intellectual biography, tries to answer that question. As he liked to say, he was partly self-taught taking advantage of the freedom that Chicago and Harvard gave him, but he also had the best economics education that anyone could have had in the 1930s, anywhere in the world. It was his wartime experience that changed the young mathematical economist into the person who could communicate with students and politicians as fluently as with other economists.

Jackie Kennedy is famous for her time with JFK in the White House and later with Onassis on his yacht. The last twenty years of her life, however, were the best. She was free of husbands. She was building a career as a book editor. She produced nearly 100 books in this period. These books offer insights into her tastes and passions as a reader. They even offer insights on her own life story.

Whether she was commissioning works on celebrities who had to hide from their own renown, or on Camelot, or on the philosophy of fashion, the stories of her books provide a new angle on what Jackie was really like.

Case Closed is the definitive reexamination of the JFK assassination. Published in 1993, on the 30th anniversary of America’s most infamous political murder, it was a New York Times bestseller and a finalist for the Pulitzer in History. I testified before Congress about the findings of my book: that Lee Harvey Oswald had, indeed, acted alone in killing JFK. 

Historian Stephen Ambrose said about Case Closed: “Posner has done a great service, in the process proving that a single researcher, working alone, is always preferable to a committee. This is a model of historical research. It should be required reading for anyone reviewing any book on the Kennedy assassination. Beyond the outstanding job of research, Posner is a dramatic storyteller. The recreation of Oswald's, and Jack Ruby's, personalities are wonderfully well done. This case has been closed by Mr. Posner's work.”

Case Closed is the definitive reexamination of the JFK assassination. Published in 1993, on the 30th anniversary of America’s most infamous political murder, it was a New York Times bestseller and a finalist for the Pulitzer in History. I testified before Congress about the findings of my book: that Lee Harvey Oswald had, indeed, acted alone in killing JFK. 

Historian Stephen Ambrose said about Case Closed: “Posner has done a great service, in the process proving that a single researcher, working alone, is always preferable to a committee. This is a model of historical research. It should be required reading for anyone reviewing any book on the Kennedy assassination. Beyond the outstanding job of research, Posner is a dramatic storyteller. The recreation of Oswald's, and Jack Ruby's, personalities are wonderfully well done. This case has been closed by Mr. Posner's work.”

Oliver Jardine is a British spy in Colombia, enamoured with local woman Veronica Velasco. As the Colombian government signs a peace agreement with the FARC guerrillas, Her Majesty’s Government decides a transfer is in order to focus on more pertinent theatres of operation. In a desperate attempt to remain in Colombia, Jardine begins to fabricate his intelligence reports. But the consequences soon take on a life of their own.

In the era of ‘fake news,’ in the land of magical realism, fiction can be just as dangerous as the truth...

Present Tense is a police procedural set in present-day South Africa, in Cape Town. Schalk Lourens, a cop with a past he’s ashamed of, must investigate the murder of his ex-boss, an execution that recalls the bad old days of apartheid. His investigation is made more difficult by the tensions of post-apartheid society. Schalk must tread a line between the new regime and the old, between personal and professional, between justice and revenge.

Present Tense won the 2020 Ned Kelly Award for a debut novel and was shortlisted for the Davitt Awards. The Sydney Morning Herald called it "superbly structured" and with a "cast of engaging characters."